OpenAI Describes Artists' Use of Glaze & Nightshade as "Abuse"

Ever since it became all but confirmed that AI developers like OpenAI, Midjourney, Stability AI, and others scrape millions – if not billions – of images from the internet to train their generative models, almost always without the consent of the original creators, and with countermeasures like Glaze and Nightshade being released in response, many Digital Artists have been asking whether these tools are actually effective in preventing their work from being fed into the machines.

Unfortunately, the only ones who could provide a definitive answer are the AI developers themselves, who, as you might expect, aren't all that interested in either confirming or denying their effectiveness. Every once in a while, however, small bits of information do slip through, such as one shared in Melissa Heikkilä's extensive article published recently in the MIT Technology Review magazine.

Written in collaboration with Ben Zhao, the creator of Glaze, the article takes an in-depth look at the nuances of the Artists vs. AI conflict, discussing how human creators are fighting back against big tech and the strategies they use to make their artwork unusable for AI training. The write-up also provides a thorough overview of Glaze's history, explaining how and why the tool was created in the first place, touching upon its development process, and outlining the developers' goal of bringing AI companies to the bargaining table to discuss the long overdue topic of fair compensation.

Towards the end, the article points out that the creators of DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion were all contacted to provide their side of the story, but only OpenAI actually responded, with its spokesperson stating that the company is constantly working on enhancing its safety measures. While the representative refused to directly address the topic of data poisoning, they indirectly acknowledged it, saying that OpenAI is always looking for ways to make its systems "more robust against this type of abuse." While it isn't much, the mere fact that a multi-billion corporation is viewing Artists' use of Glaze and Nightshade as "abuse" speaks volumes, suggesting that the tools do indeed work.

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