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For many artists, publishing artwork online is a tricky time. AI image generators are constantly improving to cheaply reproduce a wider range of unique styles, and nearly every popular platform is rushing to update its terms of service to obtain the necessary permissions to extract as much data as possible for AI training.
There are defenses against AI learning, such as Glaze, a tool that adds a small amount of imperceptible noise to images to prevent image generators from copying artists’ styles. But they’re not a permanent solution in an era when tech companies seem determined to profit by creating ever more sophisticated AI models that increasingly threaten to dilute artists’ brands and replace them in the marketplace.
Last month, the estate of Ansel Adams sued Adobe for selling AI images that mimicked the famous photographer’s style, Smithsonian reported. Adobe quickly responded and removed the AI copies. But famous artists aren’t the only ones at risk of getting scammed, and lesser-known artists may have a hard time proving that AI models reference their work. In this largely lawless world, every image uploaded risks contributing to an artist’s downfall, potentially diluting demand for their own work every time they promote new work online.
Unsurprisingly, artists are increasingly looking to protect themselves against these AI risks. As tech companies update the terms of their products (like when Meta suddenly announced it was training AI on a billion photos from Facebook and Instagram users last December), artists are frantically scanning the landscape for new defenses. That’s why, among those offering the few AI protections available today, The Glaze Project recently reported a dramatic increase in demand for its free tools.
Designed to prevent style mimicry and even poison AI models to discourage data scraping without an artist’s consent or compensation, Project Glaze’s tools are now in higher demand than ever. University of Chicago professor Ben Zhao, who created the tools, told Ars that the delay in approving a “skyrocketing” number of access requests is “bad.” And as he recently wrote on X (formerly Twitter), an “explosion in demand” in June is only likely to continue as AI threats continue to evolve. For the foreseeable future, that means artists looking for protections against AI will have to wait.
Even if Zhao’s team did nothing more than approve applications for WebGlaze, its invite-only web version of Glaze, “we probably won’t be able to keep up,” Zhao said. He warned artists on X to expect delays.
Artists’ plight is compounded by the surge in demand for Glaze, which was attacked by security researchers who claimed that it was not only possible but easy to bypass Glaze’s protections. For security researchers and some artists, the attack calls into question Glaze’s ability to truly protect artists in these trying times. But for thousands of artists joining Glaze’s queue, the long-term future looks so bleak that any promise of protection against copycats seems worth the wait.
Glaze attack sparks debate
Millions of people have already downloaded Glaze, and many artists wait weeks or even months to get access to WebGlaze, mostly by submitting invitation requests on social media. The Glaze project reviews each request to verify that each user is human and to ensure that malicious actors are not abusing the tools, which can take some time.
The team is currently struggling to approve hundreds of requests submitted daily via direct messages on Instagram and Twitter in the order they are received, and artists requesting access are having to be patient due to the extended delays. Since the inboxes on these platforms aren’t designed to easily sort messages, any artist who follows through on a request is bumped to the back of the queue, as their message bounces to the top of the inbox and Zhao’s largely volunteer team continues to approve requests from the bottom up.
“This is obviously a problem,” Zhao wrote on X while discouraging artists from sending follow-ups unless they’ve already received an invite. “We may need to change how we do invites and rethink the future of WebGlaze to keep it viable enough to support a large and growing user base.”
Interest in Glaze is likely also growing through word of mouth. Reid Southen, a freelance concept artist for major motion pictures, recommends that all artists use Glaze. Reid told Ars that WebGlaze is particularly “interesting” because it’s “available for free to people who don’t have the GPU power to run the program on their home machine.”
