DeviantArt, a Wix-owned artist platform, has announced new protections for creators that would avert their work from being used to develop artificially intelligent (AI) systems that generate art. 

Creators can prevent their work from being scraped without their knowledge or consent by selecting an option on the site.

The Arrival of Text-to-Image Tech

Early this year, text-to-image technologies like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E 2 proliferated online. This prompted art-housing platforms to adopt a policy position on whether or not they would display AI-generated artwork. 

Newgrounds, PurplePort, and Getty Images have prohibited AI-generated art, worried about the influence on artists and the legal repercussions of art made using copyrighted data.

CEO Moti Levy told TechCrunch in an email interview that they cannot deny the disruptive potential of AI tools for the arts. And it would be difficult for DeviantArt to attempt to prohibit or censor this art technology. 

Nevertheless, the firm seems to acknowledge its duty to respect the work of every artist. They would like to implement concrete actions like creating fair tools and strengthened safeguards.

Also Read: TikTok Adds 'AI Greenscreen,' Its First Text-to-Image Model For Creators

Protecting the Artists and Their Art

The new safeguards on DeviantArt will use an HTML element to prevent downloading pictures by image-crawling software robots, which are used to build reference libraries. 

Any time an artist requests that their work not be utilized in the creation of AI systems, the "noai" and "noimageai" directives would be applied to the HTML page associated with their work. 

Third parties utilizing DeviantArt-sourced material for AI training will need to eliminate content with the said tags in their data sets. This is in DeviantArt's amended terms of service that must be complied with, according to Levy.

"DeviantArt expects all users accessing our service or the DeviantArt site to respect creators' choices about the acceptable use of their content, including for AI purposes," Levy said.

DeviantArt, for its part, is advocating for artist protections to be adopted by other creative platforms. TechCrunch reported that the company is already in talks with many stakeholders about implementing such safeguards. 

However, it is uncertain if it will be able to unite the broader sector behind this strategy since less ethical actors might conceivably disregard DeviantArt's terms of service and scrape photos regardless of the HTML tag.

Welcoming AI Arts

On the other hand, DeviantArt has always welcomed and will continue to welcome works created using external AI technologies. 

Based on TechCrunch's report, the CEO said that the number of "AI-art" submissions to the platform has increased by almost a factor of 1,000 in only the previous four months.

Levy claimed that DreamUp, DeviantArt's new in-house AI art generator, is meant to facilitate "safe and fair" AI picture production. Thus, the platform is doing more than merely permitting AI artwork. 

DreamUp is a generator built on Stable Diffusion and employs models unique to DeviantArt to steer the creative process toward trendy styles.

See Also: Shutterstock to Offer AI-generated Stock Images Using OpenAI

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Trisha Kae Andrada