The Consequences of AI
"Hope you like living in a cyberpunk dystopia, 'cause you're living in one."
Admittedly, AI is an amazing tool. It can help write code, explain ideas, or even write a two week notice for an abusive employer, without us even having to think about it. Granted, it does all of these things with the requirement that we supervise and fact check it, as it has a history of not being 100% accurate.
My beef with AI does not stem from that, though. The creation of AI, specifically the image generating variety, has unsettled me to the point of writing this post. Scraping the internet for artists works without their consent, to train an algorithm on it, and acting like it's not blatant theft is ridiculous. If that's not theft, is piracy?
Morals and ethics aside, that's for another blog post. Let's get onto...
The Point of this Page
This is a resource of things we can do as individuals to minimize AI's influence on us, and disrupt it, as much as possible.
I am not a professional, I am learning as I go. If you have recommendations for additions or edits, send me an email and I will add things as I go!
Good luck.
Visual Art
Here are a few resources to protect your art.
- Opt out. This really depends on where you're hosting your art.
- Poison.
- Watermark.
- Incorrect Tagging
Adobe trains their AI, Firefly, on data gathered from their Adobe Stock service. Don't host there, beware of pirates stealing and hosting your work there.
Meta and all of it's child companies will use your data to train their model. Their policy on removing stuff from training their model is a joke, most effective solution is to avoid hosting or uploading your work on their platforms entirely. While you're at it, try avoiding posting art to social media all together.
Other providers, Midjourney, etc etc, will remove your works from their dataset if you contact them and request it. Do your research and find the avenues to do so.
Poison your images with a tool like Nightshade. This will add invisible changes to your photo that will confuse the dogshit out of any model that tries to train off of your art. Think dog is interpreted as horse, car as a bison, AI as ethical. As time rolls on, and these models and tools change, YMMV.
An alternative option, yet perhaps the most invasive, is using a watermark. Using watermarks that include patterns can help confuse AI. Research what is most effective at the time of reading.
Tag your works incorrectly. People as bicycles. Houses as keyrings. Jeff Bezos as a human. This can also work to confuse the model.
Writing
Here are a few resources to protect your written word.
- Avoid social media.
Avoid major platforms, especially Meta. These will use anything posted to them as meat for their AI beast.
Music
Here are a few resources to protect your music.