INTERESTING TIPS I FOUND ONLINE FOR PROTECTING YOUR ART AND PHOTOS AGAINST AI

There's a lot of talk about AI created art. However, AI does not  technically create art. It just copies it from the input provided by humans. The way it works is that it stores numerous images and then reduplicates them. Makes me think of those paraphrasing language apps that allow students to cheat on their essays with less risk of getting caught. As a teacher, I know something about those. As a teacher, I'm also down in bed with high fever third time this month! I love kids, but they are germ carriers or this professor calls them- germ factories. There's  silver lining to my illness, though. I managed to write  a proper blog post. Feel free not to comment on it if you don't have the time to read it. Yes, being sick and all, I decided to dig into the depressive reality of AI generated art theft.  

I'm not going to into the debate or whether AI art possesses a real  potential treat to human society or not, because that's not what this article is about. AI art might be a good thing in hands of some artists (for example if they used their own art to generate more art), but it doesn't seem right that people can use art from living artists free from charge. Moreover, people should have the option of choosing whether their art is stored and used by some program for the enhancement of that program. We don't seem to have that option and I'm not too optimistic about the future, but we can at least put up a fight. 

I don't pretend to be an expert on this topic that is why I titled this post ' Interesting Tips I Found Online for Protecting Your Art Against AI'. That's exactly what this post is about, i.e,  looking for advice online and passing on what I found, that is,  the links to sites that have more information about it. I know that a lot of people in the West live under the motto 'Fake It Until You Make It' but I don't believe in it. It might work for posing for photos, but in general life pretending you know more than you know- what benefit could it have for anyone? So, I'm not pretending to be very knowledgeable about it, I'm sharing the articles that helped me understand it. 

I'm not sure I would call myself an artist. I spend my days in school teaching English. I do get commissions and sell my art occasionally, so I guess I'm kind of an artist. I did make some definite advancement with my art technique in the last few years, but I have a long way to go. Anyhow, whether a hobby artist or  a professional one, nobody likes to have their art nicked. So, how does one protects its art from AI art programs? Honestly, I don't really know, so I turned to Internet to help. Ironically, perhaps because Internet is what allows humans using AI programs and AI art software itself to steal art. Alright, we cannot really say that AI steals art. I know I just did, a mere few paragraphs above, but it was a simplification resulting from my belief that everyone knows that AI is not autonomous. At least not yet. Perhaps some day in the future. I think we all know there is no such as thing as a AI intelligence operating on its own. It is programmed and used by humans.

LET'S DIG INTO INFORMATION ONLINE THAT I FOUND ABOUT PROTECTING ONE'S ART AGAINST AI

So, there are some the tips I found online and articles I would like to share. As I explained, I'm quite sick at the moment so today not being able to make it to school, I had the time to google stuff.

#1 ARTICLE I RECOMMEND:  AN ARTICLE NAMED 'HOW TO PROTECT IMAGES FROM AI ART GENERATORS' 

THIS ONE IS WORTH CHECKING OUT, ESPECIALLY THEIR TIP ABOUT USING A SITE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO CHECK WHETHER YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OR PAINTINGS HAVE ALREADY BEEN USED TO TRAIN AI?

I found the tips interesting and I recommend you to visit the website and read it for yourself. I FOUND SOME REALLY HELPFUL TIPS IN THIS ONE! Source: https://www.makeuseof.com/protect-images-from-ai-art-generators/

Furthermore, in this article I found about this interesting website there that basically tells you whether your images have been used to train AI art. It's called HAVE I BEEN TRAINED.

Did I try it? Yes, I did. I uploaded a few of my paintings and the similarity between them and the AI art database was always 89%.  Is that sure proof that my art was used to train AI? I didn't know initially. I did recognize work from some living Croatian artist that has been used for AI art and it was such a chilling feeling. I mean it's one thing to take Van Gogh's art and use it for training art, quite another to just have a replica of a living artist trying to make a living. 

Anyhow, I decided to give it another go and upload one of my photographs published on the blog. Not only did it show me that image but tons of photographs from my blog. Did you know your blog photographs were used and stored by AI programs? I mean I don't know how legit is this page when it comes to analyzing whether your art has been used to train AI or not but it sounds pretty legit. Moreover, I can recognize my own photographs! The software's date base shows almost all of them.

AI  ART PHOTOGRAPHY THEFT IS A THING AS WELL! YOU KNOW THAT YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS ARE BEING STORED BY AI ART PROGRAMS? 

Now, that you know, how do you feel about it? Some people might be perfectly fine with having their own private moments stored and used for unknown purposes by unknown people but somehow I think majority doesn't feel like this. Maybe it is a bit too late to worry in general, as we know what happens to those that question whether we have the right to our privacy (cough Assange, cough Snowden) but still worth to know. 

WHAT I DID NEXT? I added one more painting of mine, a painting of Sicily. Do you know what happened? It showed in the database. So, there was sure proof of a painting of mine being used by AI art. How do I feel about it? Honestly, I neither like or get it. Why would someone do that when there are so many amazing paintings created by old masters? My painting is not even a very accomplished painting. It's basically a sketch of some boats on the beach. Maybe imperfection can more easily pass as real art. I don't know but it shows in the database.

'HAVE I BEEN TRAINED' SITE SEEMS BE WORTH A SHOT BUT I RECOMMEND MORE RESEARCH AS THERE MIGHT BE MORE RESOURCES AVAILABLE.

Anyhow, this site allows you to opt up from having your art used by some AI art generators (the ones they are associated with this group of artists that created the site (if I understood correctly). However, it can not protect your work from other AI art programs. Apparently, AI companies don't disclose details about how AI works so cannot know all the software they are using. Still, pages like this might be helpful. It seems worth looking into. Even better, consult a professional and do your own research. There might be more websites like this one. 

#2 ARTICLE  I WANT TO RECOMMEND: HOW ARE ARTISTS FIGHTING BACK AGAINST AI ART THAT COPIES THEIR WORKS? 

One thing I especially appreciate about this article is how it introduced me to Glaze. It is a computer program that makes it harder for AI art generators to steal your art by making slight changes in it.  To include a direct quote: "Glaze is a tool to help artists to prevent their artistic styles from being learned and mimicked by new AI-art models such as MidJourney, Stable Diffusion and their variants. It is a collaboration between the University of Chicago SAND Lab and members of the professional artist community, most notably Karla Ortiz. Glaze has been evaluated via a user study involving over 1,100 professional artists. At a high level, here's how Glaze works: Suppose we want to protect artist Karla Ortiz's artwork in her online portfolio from being taken by AI companies and used to train models that can imitate Karla's style. Our tool adds very small changes to Karla's original artwork before it is posted online. These changes are barely visible to the human eye, meaning that the artwork still appears nearly identical to the original, while still preventing AI models from copying Karla's style. We refer to these added changes as a "style cloak" and changed artwork as "cloaked artwork." source: http://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/index.html

So, I definitely learned something from this article. Another great thing is that a top of the article you can read the summary (perfect if you are in a hurry) but want to see what the article is about: 

• Glaze is a new software tool that can hide art from AI so that it’s not stolen to create images. 
• Artists can include digital watermarks in their work to make it harder for AI models to replicate.
• Court cases are underway that could decide how much protection legal protection would be afforded human artists whose work is used in AI artwork. Source:  https://www.lifewire.com/how-artists-are-fighting-back-against-ai-art-that-copies-their-works-7110583

# 3 ARTICLE I RECOMMEND:  4 WAYS TO PROTECT YOUR ART

The third article I would like to recommend has a number four in it and I'm all for it. From these four tips, my favourite one is not posting your art on social media. This is not just about AI theft prevention, but about artists' right in general. If you post your art on Instagram, everyone can use it without your permission and just link it to Instagram, Tik Tok or whatever social network you're using. Technically, the content belongs to them. Blogs and websites are a bit different, by posting your art on your own site, you do have some control of it (at least in theory)- but often it does not amount to much. I don't deny that some artists' success was driven by their rise on social media. I know that some artists do make a profit from social media, but many also experience depression as a result of devoting a lot of time to it and not gaining anything from it. Personally, I've never had a commission or sold a painting thanks to social media.  The commissions I've had so far were all from people seeing my art hanging either in my home or other people's homes. Knowing what I know right now, I kind of regret posting my art on my blog, especially my commission art,  as that was supposed to belong to just one person. I'll try to educate myself on protecting my commission art, but I do feel bad knowing that it has probably already been copied when it should have belonged to the one special person who actually paid for it. 

THE BEST WAY TO PROTECT YOUR ART AND PHOTOGRAPHS AGAINST AI 

The most obvious and arguably the best way to protect your art against AI art theft would be not to post your art online in any shape or form. Don't allow anyone to ever photograph  or share your art  either! Sounds unrealistic, doesn't it? Even if you don't want to share your art, you cannot stop other people (especially your customers, those people that payed for your art) posting it on their sites or social media. Moreover, what if you have already shared your art? If social media sells your personal data to companies for profit, what stops them for doing the same with your art!

#4 ARTICLE I RECOMMEND: AI WILL MAKE HUMAN NOVELS OBSOLETE

I actually heard of AI writing programs but didn't know they could do novels. Basically the same principles apply as for art theft. If you have written and published anything, it might have ended up in AI writing program. How does one protect one's written word? I have no idea. Let's leave that research for another day. Another thing I like about this article that it also touches on AI art used by people who self-publish books. I'm not sure what the author's point on it was, though but I understand his concern for writers

#5 ARTICLE I RECOMMEND: THIS TOOL COULD PROTECT ARTISTS FROM ART THEFT

While I already learned about this Glaze tool from another article but I still enjoyed this New York Times articles because it introduces us with a living artist who was directly affected by the AI generated art. His art was claimed by AI art and he stopped getting commissions for book covers (the writer just opt for AI generated images). 

ANOTHER ART PROTECTION TOOL I FOUND ONLINE IS ART SHIELD. According to the website it fools the AI art generators into thinking that your art is AI generated as well. 

Direct quote: 

"ArtShield adds a watermark to your images so they're camouflaged to robot scrapers

This watermark is invisible to the human eye.

ArtShield uses the same watermark as AI image generators, so that they can be recognized by the robots." Source: https://artshield.io/#learn-more

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION

Compared with AI art, forgers could be considered heroes. Forgers spend a lot of time and effort studying the great artists. They didn't steal from live ones. It could even be argued that the appearance of forgeries revealed a lot of shady things in the art world. People started asking questions: "Why do people who can paint so well as to produce exact replicas of the greatest painting don't sell their own art?" The answer. The other side of the story is that many people buy art as an investment, tax benefits and all that. However, that's another topic. As the article I found and linked to several times in this blog states: " Nowadays, reproducing "fake" art is quick, cheap, and easy. There are only a few ways to identify an AI-generated image, making it difficult to spot the original art from its AI-generated counterpart."

Well, at least we can try!

I mean I don't know will I have the energy to go through with any of these tips and revolve/ alter all images (photograph and art) from my blog,  but I'll definitely be more wary.  Some tips I found include intentionally mislabeling, mistagging  your art and photographs in order to confuse AI generated theft. However, giving false descriptions of your art and tagging it as something else will have a negative effect for your SEO. If you don't care about it, go for it. 

SOME FINAL THOUGHTS- TO SHARE OR NOT TO SHARE!

I kind of plan not to share my future art commissions anymore. I might share my sketches and art stuff that's not important or commissioned. Before publishing this post, I remember that today is Friday Fashion Illustration. So, I uploaded an illustration I did of a fellow blogger to the 'trained' site and sure enough my fashion illustrations were all over it. So, AI art generators have been trained with my fashion illustrations! I unwittingly fed them with my illustrations. Fellow bloggers, if you see an AI generated fashion illustration that looks like you, I'm sorry, they stole from both of us.

 I really didn't know that these AI software store and steal EVERYTHING, even art from small blogs, I honestly thought they only went for famous artists. The implications of this little research I did worry me. There's no much we don't know about how information we post online is used! It seems that when it is not being directly against us then it is used for someone's else personal gain. How high is the price we pay just to connect with others online. It seems more steep by the day!

I feel like digital and modern artists are the ones who are most affected by this. Those of us who work with traditional mediums such as oil paints and acrylic might be less effected. I feel that people who buy and commission canvas are less likely to go for AI generated stuff. Who are the people who go for this stuff? Ironically, they might be fellow creatives, journalists, bloggers, writers who feel like they cannot afford art for their articles and books. To add insult to injury, these same journalist, writers and bloggers are being copied by AI writing software without realizing. I would call it poetic justice if I didn't think we were all in this together.  We really are all in this together- especially the creatives whose life is often anything but financially stable and who are often taken advantage of.

My livelihood will not be affected by this, as I'm not likely to stop being language teacher anytime soon, but many artist are truly impacted by this. One might argue that it's no skin off my nose. However, as I said,  I'm certain it's something that affects us all. Someone might be using a software  that uses a photograph of you and your loved one and you don't even know it. This is not as harmless as it might seem. Moreover, it annoys me that my (and probably also your) pictures, photographs and art have been fed into these art generating software for some time now without our consent or knowledge. I'm not giving any advice to anyone about what to do. You know what is best for you. Just bear in mind that everything you post is collected by someone. Literally.

                                     Therefore, the question remains: to post or not to post?