Last year, we received news of a team of researchers from the University of Chicago who developed an app called Glaze, which protects against AI copying art styles. This year, the same research team has released a new tool called Nightshade, which acts like a “poisonous concoction” to distort AI models’ output (aptly named after the poisonous flower, Nightshade).
The team compares Glaze as a “preventative” measure, while Nightshade acts as an “offensive” measure. The technique behind Nightshade involves embedding code into images that humans cannot see, but AI interprets as distorted from the original. When these Nightshade-embedded images are fed into AI models during training, it results in less stable outcomes compared to the original.
In a research paper published in October 2023, a demonstration was shown of a “poisoned” model. If a model was trained on 1,000 dog images, but half of them were affected by Nightshade, the output would be images of cats instead. It is evident that the model’s distortion is not significant when only 500 Nightshade-affected samples are used, but it becomes apparent once all 1,000 samples are tainted.
The researchers describe Nightshade as a weapon against AI models that do not respect intellectual property or abide by defined guidelines (such as the ones specified in the robots.txt file, prohibiting the use of image scraping for training). They recommend using Glaze to protect all images, while the decision to employ Nightshade as a countermeasure is left to individual artists. Furthermore, the research team is currently developing a tool that incorporates both Glaze and Nightshade functionalities.
TLDR: A team of researchers from the University of Chicago has developed an app called Glaze that prevents AI from copying art styles. They have now introduced Nightshade, a tool that distorts AI models’ outputs by embedding imperceptible code into images. While Glaze acts as a preventative measure, Nightshade serves as an offensive tool against AI models that disregard intellectual property. The researchers suggest using Glaze for overall protection and leave it to artists to decide whether to employ Nightshade. A combined tool incorporating both Glaze and Nightshade functionalities is currently under development.
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