What Artists Need NOW: Meta AI, Instagram, Glaze & Cara

Get accurate, essential info on what you can do as an artist within this confusing landscape of AI. Art Prof Clara Lieu provides an overview of the most important parts of this situation as well as concrete, actional things you can do now to protect yourself.

AI PLAYLIST

THE GLAZE PROJECT

CARA APP

Cartoon Brew, Animation Industry

NEW YORK TIMES

Sarah Andersen

Greg Rutkowski

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Clara Lieu was an Adjunct Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design from 2007-2020. Her artwork has been exhibited at the International Print Center NY, the Currier Museum, Childs Gallery, the Davis Museum, and more. Lieu received an artist fellowship from the MA Cultural Council, has written for the NY Times, and lectured at Brown University, the NAEA conference, and in Vancouver & China. She has been profiled in Artsy, Hyperallergic, KPCC, & WBUR.

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[maryhough]

why are artists NOT getting a class action lawsuit figured out for Meta. This is possibly the biggest instance of IP theft of our time

[fuzonzord]

I noticed that a few local sci-fi/fantasy publishers started using AI generated covers. It made me not want to buy their books any more.

[KatieCroonenberghs]

A lot of people seem confused about Cara. It was not built as a replacement for Instagram. It came about after Artstation embraced AI and Jingna threw around an idea of creating a place for artists that resisted ai, a place where AD's or anyone wanting to hire artists could go to find artists that don't use ai as well as just a place for artists to gather and learn.
There are a lot of traditional artists on there! I joined Cara about a week and a half after it was launched in January 2023 and I'm fully traditional (watercolor and gouache). I follow a ton of other traditional artists including many fine artists and wildlife artists. Many of the artists that first joined the site were fleeing Artstation - so, they were industry professionals that often work digitally.
Cara has a lot going for it (I mean, other than being owned by someone that isn't a huge corporation and actively fights for artist rights). There is a social feed integrated for community with a 5000 character limit and every post is chronological. No algorithm to fight. No "we'll show your post to 10% of your following and if they like it THEN we'll show it to more of your following" bs.
AI images have ruined so much for me, that Cara is a refuge of art where AI isn't allowed. When I scroll through there I know it's real art made by people. I can *enjoy* art again without questioning everything I see. It's so much more than just "but I have to build an audience!". Not everything is about numbers.
However, if you want to build a varied audience then BlueSky Social is where to go. A true social platform with no algorithm and a huge array of moderation tools. It lacks a gallery feature however (which is something Cara provides), so it's more like Twitter in setup.
I use Cara as my gallery-social and Blue Sky as my general-audience-social. Getting away from all things Meta several years ago was the best thing I've ever done for my health and my art.

[Kat-dgxb]

Can confirm that Cara is not just for digital art. One of my most popular portfolio images I posted months before the big blowout with meta, was a drawing of Calcifer in oil pastel. I still get notifications about it sometimes XD

[ManCub]

A good tip I learned to fight AI from completely stealing your style is to take images of your art in a WIP view. They don’t actually have to be WIP, but take them the same way. Ex: You have a canvas you painted sitting on a table, or you take a picture of your IPad with your art on it. When AI sees this, not only will it train itself on your art, but also the environment you’re in, which will make AI think that is part of your art too.

[jackblacksash]

When people reach the crisis of meaning our human artwork will be greatly valued.

[cookietoonam]

I'm not joining Cara, I'm not deleting my Instagram account, but I'm not going to post on there anymore. I don't know what's going to happen going forward. But one thing for certain, I'm not going to stop drawing.

[TechnicallyTrent]

Excellent advice...I agree artists should not take any drastic action (like permanently deleting their artwork from the internet) until the dust settles.

[MarylandFreeAgentHombre-wsoe]

I am both a Master artist and a software engineer, I want all artists to know, that AI will not replace you, even animation requires human intervention, With that said, artist need to change their strategies to survive doing this work.

[noname-nuoo]

I am planning on joining Cara definitely. I don't want meta AI stealing my images. I'm new at this so i haven't even been active on ig thank God! Cara has no art buyers but that'll be a place where i send them to check out my art if they ask.

[theinsane]

As difficult as it is to say this, but the professional world of artists is going to shrink drastically. Even if companies start paying artists for training data or even stop training on public data, the cat is out of the bag. Producers, CEOs, and middle managers absolutely love this technology because it can do the work on dozens of artists for substantially less money. They will continue to us it and already have started using it. To give a stark example, the game Stellaris has added NPCs (non player characters ) voiced by AI, as well as generated assets for the game using AI.

[KellyCDB]

My work being taken/scraped/stolen isn’t the upsetting part for me. That would be more personal than this is. It’s the entirety of it. The system it’s feeding into.

[carolynapappas]

I'm confused about Glaze being integrated with Cara. From what I saw, there is a Glaze utility within Cara, but you still have to choose to process it yourself. There are different options for the Glaze output, so if it were automatic when uploading to Cara, that is not apparent. I have Glaze installed on my own computer, but not everyone has a computer that is powerful enough to run it. In those cases, I think the Glaze web app is a good idea.

[Savage_D_]

Some people are deleting Instagram not because of Cara, but because they are tired of putting so much effort to posting art while onlyfns models get promoted above your work!

[SeonasStudio]

Thank you for this video. I spent an hour today trying to convince the normies on Facebook that meta and ai are accelerating the enshittification of the internet and destroying the internet as we know it, and there was so much apologism that I felt like I was a crazy person living in an alternate reality. Glad to see I’m not the only one really spooked by this. I DO feel trapped by Meta with this crap. I haven’t joined cara yet because I didn’t want to contribute to their financial hardship until they’d sorted it out but I really like the portfolio option. Keeping an eye on that while I extricate myself from Meta. /sigh

[marioVSN]

I see everyone saying that Cara is 'auto glazing' images, and I don't think that's enabled right now.. (my last upload was 10 days ago)

Prior to Cara coming into the spotlight, they had a webglaze interface, that would allow the users to have daily tokens for glazing images, but they went through an abuse/attack and had to disable it, so as of now, it's DISABLED as far as I know... you gotta manually glaze your stuff on your PC...

[rkneegordon]

It’s just a good idea to wait for more information, then make an informed decision. The truth is, we can’t stop what’s coming, but we can learn how to prepare for it.

[neilagangitlog]

I just joined Cara! Is anyone else there too? I'd like to make art friends

[manilamartin]

Thanks for this video. I work as a photographer these days and was a little surprised that Adobe admits to looking through all photographers content for illegal activity. I think it's pretty crazy.

[locandro]

Thank you so much for posting this. It's been hard for me to grasp exactly what's going on w/ AI.