Glaze & Nightshade

Glaze is a free desktop application designed to help artists protect their unique artistic style from being learned and replicated by generative AI models. When you run your artwork through Glaze, it applies a carefully calculated set of minimal pixel changes. These changes are virtually invisible to the human eye but act as a 'cloak' that confuses AI systems. If someone then tries to use your Glaze-protected images to train a style-copying AI model, the model will learn a distorted version of your style, preventing an accurate copy. This gives artists a way to share their work online with more control over how it is used by AI.

The tool works by exploiting the difference between human and machine perception. It uses a technique that identifies the specific visual features AI models look for when learning an artistic style and then subtly alters those features. You can adjust the protection intensity based on your artwork's characteristics, balancing security with preservation of the original image quality. A related tool, Nightshade, offers a more aggressive 'poisoning' approach for those who want to actively disrupt AI training data. Both tools are research projects from the University of Chicago's SAND Lab.

Glaze is most beneficial for digital artists, illustrators, and photographers who share their portfolios on social media or art platforms and are concerned about unauthorized style imitation by AI. It's a practical tool for anyone wanting to assert more agency over their creative output in the age of generative AI. While not a perfect, unbreakable shield, it provides a significant layer of defense, allowing artists to continue sharing their work while making it harder for their style to be scraped and copied without permission.