Through methods such as poisoning their art, moving to alternative social media platforms and suing AI art generation companies.
Nightshade: "Computer science professor at the University of Chicago, Ben Zhao, created Nightshade, a tool to help defend artists from copyright infringement from GenAI companies that are scanninging their existing artwork." (Sonnet, 2023)
Glaze: "Artists who want to upload their work online but don’t want their images to be scraped by AI companies can upload them to Glaze and choose to mask it with an art style different from theirs." (Heikkilä, 2023)
How they combat AI: "Once AI developers scrape the internet to get more data to tweak an existing AI model or build a new one, these poisoned samples make their way into the model’s data set and cause it to malfunction." (Heikkilä, 2023)
(AI Generated, Compiled by the University of Chicago)
With the uncrease in many major social media permitting scrapeing and people to post AI art claiming it as their own, artists have been starting to switch social media platforms for posting their work.
One major platform that has dircetly announced that it will permit its own AI to scrape work is Meta, with its platforms Instagram, Facebook and X.
There is also the artist platform Artstation which is a platform dedicated pureley for artists that vehimately supports AI art. As a result, artists began protesting by posting the following image or their own variation of the image.
Artstation began restricting posts and banning artists that shared this visual, sparking even more outrage from artists.
"AI copyright infringement cases are at the very beginning phases of litigation. US courts have not yet substantively weighed in on the issue, leaving much in question regarding whether these AI systems are directly infringing copyright, inducing copyright infringement, and altering copyright management information. Just as these AI systems continue to develop, so too is US copyright law as it seeks to address the novel issues presented by AI." (Schindler et al., 2024)
Artists are realizing their rights to copywrite and are starting to sue AI art generating companies. One recently completed lawsuit was the case of SARAH ANDERSEN, et al., Plaintiffs, v. STABILITY AI LTD., et al., Defendants. In the final ruling,
"Defendants’ motions to dismiss the DMCA claims are GRANTED and the DMCA claims are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE. Defendants’ motions to dismiss the unjust enrichment claims are GRANTED and those claims are DISMISSED with leave to amend. Defendants’ motions to dismiss the Copyright Act claims are DENIED. Midjourney’s motion to dismiss the Lanham Act claims is DENIED. DeviantArt’s motion to dismiss the breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claims is GRANTED and those claims are DISMISSED WITH PREJUDICE." (William H. Orrick United States District Judge, 2024)