🖼️ Nightshade: Poison Pill for AI?

MusicFX hits a Google high note🎵, TIME's photo finish with ‘Human Element’📸, and Nightshade's toxic art for AI🖼️.

February 02, 2024 • Reading Time: 10 minutes

Created by the people at Beazy.

Welcome, creative friends!

Nightshade: Poison Pill or Play of Light? Dive into the murkiest corners of AI and image copyright. Read—if you dare!

In today's rundown:

  • 🎵 Google's MusicFX launch

  • 📸 TIME's photo winners

  • 🖼️ Nightshade AI stirs up

  • 🔥 Press Worthy Stories

  • 📚 Learn & Grow

Read time: 3 minutes

VISUAL CREATORS

“David Fuentes” by Owen Harvey | “Mother’s Journey, 001” by Sonali Ohrie

Owen Harvey took home the top honor with his striking portrait “David Fuentes”, which also won the Portraits in the World category.

The competition received over 2,200 submissions from photographers in 9 countries, vying for a chance at a paid TIME assignment, a custom mentorship with TIME’s photo editors and a cash prize of over $16,000.

Maria Louceiro won in the Portraits of Family category with her heartwarming shot “Mayila & Marlene”, while Aixiao Li’s intimate image “Wig in the Bathroom” snagged the Portraits of Influence award.

Sonali Ohrie captured the essence of maternal strength in her winning series “Mother’s Journey, 001”, and Ryan Schude took viewers on a cultural tour of LA’s lesser-known museums to win in the series category.

It’s a powerful showcase of humanity through the lens—a must-see for photography enthusiasts.

Which photo stole your heart?

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Yesterday’s poll:

Will Denis Villeneuve's vision liberate cinema?
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🎬 Creative drought
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤑 I want my blockbusters
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🌐 Indies will thrive

🔥 Press Worthy

  1. Astrhori’s 18mm F8 2X Periprobe lens offers APS-C shooters a new angle—literally.

  2. Canon slashes prices on flagship R5 and EOS R3 cameras by $500 and $1,000, respectively.

  3. Anxiety fuels a wave of conceptual photography. From Jon Higbee’s introspective NYC series to DJ Morrow’s balloon therapy, art meets emotions with a click. Turns out, great art can come from dark places. (NSFW)

  4. Podcast ad sales get an AI boost: iHeartMedia and Acast are using AI to improve messaging and voice for targeted demographics. AD-BOTS, ACTIVATE!

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📚 Learn & Grow

🔥 Get unlimited access to a global network of perfect shooting locations & studios, top-notch equipment and 10’000+ talented professionals 🎥

PRODUCTION MASTERY

Data poisoning tool Nightshade, which can make images unrecognizable to AI models, has been downloaded 250,000 times since its January 18 release. It joins Glaze, which prevents AI from learning an artist's style, and has seen 2.2 million downloads since April 2023.

Researchers say that corrupting less than 25% of a dataset can render AI-generated images unusable.

Patrons of the tools tend to be independent creators looking to protect their work from being copied or blended into AI datasets without permission.

While some argue that the poisoned data can be reverted or avoided, others say artists just want fair compensation.

Regulation could make the tools obsolete, but artists hope they’ll have found adequate protection by then, as the lawsuits from Getty Images and the New York Times seek to establish legal precedents.

Nightshade: Will A.I. adapt or die?

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Yesterday’s poll:

DJI's 3D editor: Game-changer or Grounded?
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚁 Taking off
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🤷 Slow burn
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🛬 Staying grounded

🔥 Press Worthy

  1. Google’s new AI tool, ImageFX, lets you create and modify images using text prompts and “expressive chips.” Safety features limit problematic outputs, and a new watermark identifies AI-generated images.

  2. Shopify's AI editor lets sellers change product backgrounds and cuts photo studios out of the equation.

  3. Celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D slams photographer over the recently dismissed Miles Davis tattoo copyright case; calls the experience “traumatizing”.

  4. Getty’s Italian site removes Michelangelo’s David after a lawsuit from Italy’s Ministry of Culture. Italy protects cultural imagery, even in the public domain.

📚 Learn & Grow

CREATOR ECONOMY

Google

Google has made its AI music generator, MusicFX, available to the public.

The tool, part of Google’s AI Test Kitchen, lets users input text prompts to create short music tracks.

MusicFX is an update to MusicLM, which Google debuted in 2023 and was initially available to a select group of users. The tool suggests descriptor words for music styles and recommends additional tags to further specify the desired sound.

It provides tracks in 30-second increments, with options to extend or loop them.

MusicFX outputs have drawn mixed reviews, raising questions about the distinctiveness of AI-generated music and lingering copyright concerns.

AI-generated music: Novelty or the future?

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Yesterday’s poll:

Was The Messenger doomed from the start?
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 📰 Hot air
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 💰 Ad squeeze
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤷‍♂️ Other

🔥 Press Worthy

  1. LiveDrop app shares photos offline, using a QR-like code that scrambles and unscrambles files; limited to 250Kbps for now.

  2. EU regulation opens the door for alternative iPhone app stores, but Meta and other big developers aren't biting. Apple's fees are the deal-breaker.

  3. Fediverse, powered by ActivityPub, challenges social media norms. Decentralized platforms unite, giving control back to users. Even Facebook is in on this!

  4. Snap recalls its 71,000 Pixy drones after battery fires and injuries, telling users to stop flying them and return for a full refund.

📚 Learn & Grow

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