Since early 2023, photographer Jingna Zhang and a small crew of volunteers have maintained Cara, an image-sharing app that attracted about 1.5 million artists. The platform gained traction due to its stance against unauthorized use of art for AI training and its focus on protecting creators from Big Tech exploitation. However, the platform's safeguards were insufficient to prevent large-scale data scraping, leading to three major incidents this month. The first incident involved a user who scraped 12 million images from Cara and posted the archive online, sparking a heated debate about the ethics of data harvesting. Zhang noted that the scraper’s actions were both targeted and hurtful, as laws do not yet fully protect artists from such data harvests. She is part of two ongoing class actions against companies like Stability AI and Google, alleging their AI tools were trained on copyrighted work. The scraper, who initially posted about his actions on Reddit, later expressed regret and agreed to help Zhang develop a new tool to protect artists. Source: wired

The second scraper obtained 8.5 million links from Cara, along with metadata, and uploaded them to Hugging Face. The platform responded by stating it could not remove the artworks themselves, as they were hosted elsewhere. A third scraper took 123,000 images and shared them on Academic Torrents, prompting Zhang to launch a GoFundMe campaign for legal fees, which has raised over $100,000. Zhang emphasized that Cara cannot guarantee complete security, and some users have left the platform, fearing further attacks. She also criticized the misconception that moving to other platforms would offer more protection, as larger platforms are more likely to be scraped. Source: wired

Zhang and the former scraper, known as Heft, are now working together on a tool called Lantern. Lantern allows artists to create a 'one-way fingerprint' for their images without storing them on the platform. It scans new AI image datasets and notifies artists if their work appears in one, enabling them to request removal or submit a takedown notice. Heft, a software student, initially scraped Cara for a technical project but later felt remorse after seeing the impact on the community. He now helps identify structural weaknesses in the platform and collaborates with Zhang to develop a tool that can offer artists more control and awareness. Source: wired