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Researchers at the University of Chicago have developed a tool that gives artists the ability to \u201cpoison\u201d their digital art in order to stop developers from training artificial intelligence (AI) systems on their work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Called \u201cNightshade,\u201d after the family of plants, some of which are known for their poisonous berries, the tool modifies images in such a way that their inclusion contaminates the datasets used to train AI with incorrect information. <\/p>\n
According to a report from MIT\u2019s Technology Review, Nightshade changes<\/a> the pixels of a digital image in order to trick an AI system into misinterpreting it. As examples, Tech Review mentions convincing the AI that an image of a cat is a dog and vice versa. <\/p>\n In doing so, the AI\u2019s ability to generate accurate and sensical outputs would theoretically be damaged. Using the above example, if a user requested an image of a \u201ccat\u201d from the tainted AI, they might instead get a dog labelled as a cat or an amalgamation of all the \u201ccats\u201d in the AI\u2019s training set, including those that are actually images of dogs that have been modified by the Nightshade tool. <\/p>\n Related: <\/em><\/strong>Universal Music Group enters partnership to protect artists\u2019 rights against AI violations<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n One expert who viewed the work, Vitaly Shmatikov, a professor at Cornell University, opined that researchers \u201cdon\u2019t yet know of robust defenses against these attacks.\u201d The implication being that even robust models such as OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT could be at risk.<\/p>\n The research team behind Nightshade is led by Professor Ben Zhao of the University of Chicago. The new tool is actually an expansion of their existing artist protection software called<\/a> Glaze. In their previous work, they designed a method by which an artist could obfuscate, or \u201cglaze\u201d the style of their artwork.<\/p>\n An artist who created a charcoal portrait, for example, could be glazed to appear to an AI system as modern art. <\/p>\n