Created software to protect the author’s style from the insatiability of AI

Researchers at the University of Chicago have released Glaze, a free software that can protect artists’ signature styles from attempts to imitate them by artificial intelligence. The mechanism of action is such that if a generative AI finds an image protected by Glaze on the network, it cannot correctly analyze and copy its manner.

Glaze was created at the request of artists who were unhappy that programs like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, trained on many images on the Internet, could also learn from their work, thereby devaluing their own style developed over the years. Among others, the Glaze team worked with illustrator Carla Ortiz, one of the plaintiffs in a US lawsuit against several firms providing generative artificial intelligence services for image creation.

“If Carla uses our tool to hide her work by adding tiny changes before posting it to her online portfolio, then Stable Diffusion won’t recognize Carla’s art style. Instead, the model will interpret her art as a different style – for example, the style of Vincent van Gogh, ”the authors said.

In short, Glaze adds tiny changes to images that are invisible to the human eye, but visible to algorithms. However, the creators of Glaze admit that their program is not a panacea, given how quickly AI is developing. The software is already available for free download.