The recent revelation that Midjourney AI’s founders actively compiled stolen art to train the art generation tool is but the latest evidence of the unethical nature of GenAI art. But while legal and legislative cases are mounting against these AI tools, artists are left to fend for themselves until regulations are put in place protecting their work from being used to train AI models without proper permissions, attribution, and compensation. For a while, it seemed the only method of prevention was to simply not post your art online—a poor solution for artists who use social media and online portfolios to find clients.
Now, though, researchers at the University of Chicago have released two free desktop apps for Windows and Mac that not only make it impossible for an AI model to read an image or use it to generate content, but which actively harm these models if they try to.
The first, Glaze, adds digital “noise” to an image that makes it unreadable by GenAI art tools like Midjourney. The added noise is minimal—at worst, you might see some minor grain or artifacting, similar to what happens when you upload an image to Instagram or X (aka Twitter). The tool has already seen major improvements in minimizing the visual effects already, and it’s safe to assume image clarity will continue improving as the team further iterates on the app.
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