The artists have finally had enough of the Meta’s aggressive AI policies, but the Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run anti-AI social platform, Head has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users in the last week, topping the App Store charts.
Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta uses public posts to train his genetic artificial intelligence systems only European users they can opt out as they are protected by GDPR laws. Generative AI has become so central to Meta’s applications that artists have reached their breaking point.
“When you put [AI] so much in their face, and then give them the option to opt out, but then increase the friction to opt out… I think that increases their anger level — like, okay, now I’m fed up.” Jingna Zhanga renowned photographer and founder of Cara, told TechCrunch.
Cara, which has a web and mobile app, is like a cross between Instagram and X, but built specifically for artists. On your profile, you can host a portfolio of work, but you can also post updates to your feed like any other microblogging site.
Zhang is ideally placed to run an artist-centric social network where they can post without the risk of becoming part of an AI training dataset. Zhang has campaigned on behalf of artists recently winning an appeal in Luxembourg court over a painter who copied one of her photographs, which she took for Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam.
“Using a different medium was irrelevant. That my work was “available online” was irrelevant. Consent was necessary,” Zhang wrote to X.
Zhang and three other artists are as well sue Google for allegedly using their copyrighted work to train Imagen, an AI imaging company. He is also a plaintiff in a similar lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI.
“Words cannot describe how dehumanizing it is to see my name used 20,000+ times on MidJourney,” she wrote in a Post on Instagram. “My life’s work and who I am—turned into meaningless fodder for a commercial image slot.”
Artists are so resistant to AI because the training data behind many of these image-making devices includes their work without their consent. These models gather such a large bundle of artwork by scouring the internet for images, regardless of whether or not those images are copyrighted. It’s a slap in the face for artists – not only are their jobs at risk from AI, but the same AI is often fueled by their work.
“When it comes to art, unfortunately, we come from a fundamentally different point of view and perspective because on the technology side, you have this strong history of open source and people just think, well, you’re putting it out there. there, so it’s for people to use it,” Zhang said. “For artists, it’s part of who we are and our identity. I wouldn’t want my best friend to manipulate my work without asking. There’s a nuance to how we see things, but I don’t think people understand that the art we make is not a product.”
This commitment to protecting artists from copyright infringement extends to Cara, who works with the University of Chicago’s Glaze Project. By using Glaze, artists who publish their work on Cara have an added layer of protection from AI scratching.
Other projects have also stepped up to defend artists. Spawning AI, an artist-led company, has created an API that allows artists to pull their work from popular datasets. But this opt-out only works if the companies using these datasets honor the artists’ requests. So far, HuggingFace and Stability have agreed to respect Spawning’s Do Not Train registry, but artists’ work cannot be retroactively removed from models that have already been trained.
“I think there’s this conflict between background and expectations of what we put online,” Zhang said. “For artists, we want to share our work with the world. We put it online and don’t charge people to view this work, but that doesn’t mean we give up our copyright or any ownership of our work.”
An avid Go player and fan, Zhang learned about the potential of artificial intelligence eight years ago when Google’s AlphaGo system defeated Lee Sedol, one of the world’s best players.
“We will never have the same experience as pre-AlphaGo,” Zhang said. “The beauty and mystery of Go was that you wanted to see how far and how interesting one man’s game could be. Now, the highest achievement would be if you manage to beat an AI.”
But what’s more disappointing is that in a recent interview with Google, Sedol said he might not have become a professional Go player if AlphaGo had existed in his youth.
In a suspension, Zhang explained, “Lee Sedol wrote so much of the history of Go and was an icon of our time, a role model for me. So to see him say that if he had to choose again, he wouldn’t go pro – because of AI. Words cannot adequately describe how heartbroken I am to hear this.”
But because of Zhang’s interest in Go, she had a head start on thinking about how artificial intelligence would affect her career as an artist.
Cara isn’t Zhang’s first attempt at creating an artist-friendly social network. But good timing aside, she believes Cara has had the best chance for longevity because she’s grown up as a founder herself. From managing an esports team to attending Stanford’s Ignite program, he learned how to work in a team.
“I think it’s experience and maturity. You can learn from all your past experiences,” he said. “For me, I was a national athlete for Singapore and then a photographer, and both times I did very well in my particular chosen fields, but it’s very individual – you just have to be very, very good yourself. Let’s just say my teamwork wasn’t the best.”
Now, Cara is having a moment of discovery. But this boom in popularity doesn’t come without conflict.
Founded in late 2022, Cara is fully staffed and much of its engineering support comes from volunteers. Any company would struggle with an unexpected 1525% increase in users, let alone one operating with such a small team.
On Wednesday, Zhang opened her email to find a horrible shock: her bill for using Vercel, a web hosting company, would cost $96,280 for the last week. After her posted on X on the bill, Vercel’s VP of product Lee Robinson responded publicly, claiming that his team tried to reach out in time — but Zhang was so overwhelmed by the platform’s rapid growth that she missed Vercel’s emails.
“The team and I are standing by, ready to work with you to ensure your application runs as efficiently as possible on our infra,” Robinson He wrote to Zhang in X. But it’s unclear how this issue will be resolved and whether he could put Cara on life support.
Zhang told TechCrunch that she hasn’t sought venture funding because she doesn’t want to have to answer to outside investors — and it can’t be easy to find an angel investor committed to supporting artists’ interests.
The next few weeks could prove bleak for Cara, but at least Zhang has a community of like-minded artists on her side.
“Making a product is a bit like art,” he said. “I think you just make something that you like as a person and know that not everyone is going to love it. But some like-minded people would, and then you can grow your community from there.”
