However, it’s “simplistic to think that if you have a real security problem and you’re trying to design a protection tool, the answer should be either it works perfectly or you don’t implement it,” Zhao says, citing spam. filters and firewalls as examples. Defense is a constant game of cat and mouse. And he believes most artists are smart enough to understand the risk.

Offering hope

The fight between AI creators and companies is fierce. The current paradigm in AI is to build larger and larger models and, at least currently, there is no getting around the fact that they require vast data sets pulled from the internet to train. Tech companies argue that anything on the public Internet is fair game and that it is “impossible” to build advanced AI tools no copyrighted material; Many artists argue that technology companies have stolen their intellectual property. and violated copyright law, and who need ways to keep their individual works off the models, or at least receive proper credit and compensation for their use.

So far, creatives aren’t exactly winning. A series of companies have already replaced designers, editors and illustrators with artificial intelligence systems. In a high profile case, Marvel Studios used AI generated images instead of human-made art in the title sequence of its 2023 TV series secret invasion. In another, a radio station fired its human presenters and replaced them with AI. Technology has become a major bone of contention between unions and film, television and creative studios, most recently sparking a strike by video game artists. There are numerous ongoing lawsuits by artists, writers, publishers and record labels against artificial intelligence companies. It will likely take years until there is a clear legal resolution. But even a court ruling won’t necessarily untangle the difficult ethical questions created by generative AI. Nor is any future government regulation likely to do so, if it ever materializes.

That’s why Zhao and Zheng see Glaze and Nightshade as necessary interventions: tools to defend original work, attack those who would help themselves, and, at the very least, buy artists some time. Having a perfect solution is not really the point. Researchers must offer something Now, as the AI ​​industry advances at breakneck speed, Zheng says, it means companies are ignoring very real harms to humans. “This is probably the first time in all of our technology careers that we’ve really seen so much conflict,” he adds.

On a much larger scale, she and Zhao tell me they hope Glaze and Nightshade will eventually have the power to overhaul how AI companies use art and how their products produce it. It is tremendously expensive to train AI models and extremely laborious for engineers to find and purge poisoned samples in a data set of billions of images. In theory, if there are enough images of Nightshaded on the internet and tech companies see their models breaking as a result, this could push developers to the negotiating table to negotiate over licensing and fair compensation.

That, of course, is still a big “if.” MIT Technology Review He contacted several AI companies, including Midjourney and Stability AI, which did not respond to requests for comment. Meanwhile, an OpenAI spokesperson did not confirm any details about the data poisoning, but said that the company takes the security of its products seriously and continually improves its security measures: “We are always working on how we can make our systems be more robust against this type of abuse.”

In the meantime, SAND Lab is moving forward and seeking funding from foundations and nonprofits to keep the project going. They also say there has been interest from large companies seeking to protect their intellectual property (although they decline to say which ones), and Zhao and Zheng are exploring how the tools could be applied in other industries, such as games, videos or music. . . In the meantime, they plan to continue updating Glaze and Nightshade to make them as robust as possible, working closely with students in the Chicago lab, where, on another wall, Toorenent’s book hangs. Belladonna. The box has a heart-shaped note taped to the bottom right corner: “Thank you! You have given us artists hope.”