I guess diversity of tactics probably is a good way to stop scrapers from avoiding the traps we set. Good on you for helping out. Also I like the name lol
On a slightly unrelated note, is rust a web dev language? I’ve been meaning to learn it myself since I’ve heard it’s basically a better, modern alternative to C++
Oh wow I’m dense, I didn’t even think about the fact that scrapers probably don't render the full webpage and instead just seek out images in the HTML lol
This seems like a much easier to set up trap than creating a tarpit and then serving bullshit images.
Would it negatively impact the loading times for regular users? Like would it take significant amounts of time for the webpage to load if you added hundreds of these hidden images?
That’s the intent behind Nightshade right?
Would overlaying the image with a different, slightly transparent image be enough to shift the weights? Or is there a specific method of pseudorandom hostile noise generation that you’d suggest?
I’d imagine the former is likely more computationally efficient, but if the latter is more effective at poisoning and your goal is to maximize damage regardless of cost, then that would be the better option.
Nice straw man infographic, but I’m not sure how it’s relevant.
My post was about methods to poison art scraping models. I said nothing about my reasons for doing so, maybe I just like fucking up corpos. Maybe I just like thinking about interesting topics and hearing other people’s ideas.
Kind of sad that you’re worked up enough about this to both miss the point, and to have an infographic on hand just in case you get offended by anyone not praising generative AI.
If you do have any knowledge of how AI functions, I’d be happy to hear your thoughts on the topic which, again, is on how to poison models that use image scrapers, not the ethics of AI or lack thereof.
That thread was hard to read. I do sometimes feel bad for people who don’t understand artists because they don’t realize they have the capability to be artists themselves.
I do realize that any poisoning of models won’t stop backups of the pre-decay models from being utilized, but if we make the web unscrapable, it will slow or even prevent art from being stolen in the future.
I highly doubt the big AI companies get people to screen the scraped images (at least not all of them) because the whole point in their mind is to remove the need to pay people for work lol
This thought did cross my mind, but I bet the quality filters probably check for the relevancy of words. And if they don’t already, it wouldn’t take long for them to implement a simple fix.
Generating an AI image based on the text you randomly generate would satisfy this and still cause model decay, but in both cases, generating AI images is pretty costly which means it’s not a very viable attack option for most people.
I’d heard of Glaze before and Nightshade seems useful, but only Glaze protects against mimicry and the Nightshade page makes it seem like the researchers aren’t sure how well the two would do together.
It looks like Nightshade is doing what I described (though on a single image basis) of trying to trick the AI into believing the characteristics of one thing apply to another, but I’d imagine that poisoning could be much more potent if the constraint of “still looks the same to a human” were voided.
If you know you’re feeding an AI, you can go all out on the poisoning. No one cares what it looks like as long as the AI thinks it’s valid.
As for the difficulties in generating meaningful images, it would certainly be more intense than Markov chain text generation, but I think it might not be that hard if you just modify the real art from the site.
Say you just slapped a ton of Snapchat filters on an artwork, or used a blur tool in random places, or drew random line segments that are roughly the same color as their nearby pixels, and maybe shift the hue and saturation. I bet small modifications like that could slip through quality filters but still cause damage to the model.
Edit: Just realized this might sound like I’m suggesting that messing up the art shown on the site through more destructive means would be better than Glaze or Nightshade. That’s not what I meant.
Those edit suggestions were only for the art shown in the tarpit, so you’d only make those destructive modifications to the art you’re showing the AI scrapers. The source images shown to human patrons can remain unedited.
Isn’t that what the arms race is? Adapting to new situations?