Artists have finally had enough of Meta's predatory AI policies, but Meta's loss is Cara's gain: Cara, the artist-run anti-AI social platform, has grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users in the past week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts.
Instagram is a staple for many artists, who use it to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta uses public posts to train its generative AI system, which is protected by GDPR law and only European users can opt out. Because the generative AI is so front and center in Meta's app, it's pushing artists to their limits.
“you [AI] “If you ask customers for too much, and then give them the option to opt out, but then increase the friction to opt out…I think this will increase the anger level of customers, and they'll feel like they've had enough,” Jingna Zhang, celebrity photographer and founder of Cara, told TechCrunch.
With both a web and mobile app, Cara is like a cross between Instagram and X, built specifically for artists. Your profile can host a portfolio of your work, but like other microblogging sites, you can also post updates to your feed.
Trang is perfectly positioned to lead an artist-centric social network where artists can post without risking becoming part of the AI's training data. Trang fights for artists, and recently won an appeal in a Luxembourg court against a painter who copied one of his photos for the Vietnamese edition of Harper's Bazaar.
“Using a different medium is irrelevant. Nor is it relevant that my work is 'available online'. Consent was required,” Zhang wrote to X.
I won. I won the appeal.
A Luxembourg court has ruled that Jeff Dishberg has infringed my copyright by using my work without permission.
Using a different medium doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that my work is “available online.” Consent was required. 1/ pic.twitter.com/f9GrmUScCY
— Zhang Jingna @ cara.app/zemotion (@zemotion) May 10, 2024
Chan and three other artists are suing Google for using their copyrighted work to train Imagen, an AI image-generation tool. Chan is also a plaintiff in similar lawsuits against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Runway AI.
“I can't tell you how dehumanizing it makes me to see my name used over 20,000 times in 'Midjourney,'” she wrote in an Instagram post. “My life's work and who I am have been reduced to meaningless fodder for a commercial image slot machine.”
Artists are resistant to AI because the training data for these image generators includes artists' work without their consent. These models dig through the internet to compile vast amounts of artwork, whether copyrighted or not. For artists, this is humiliating: not only are their work at risk from AI, but these same AIs are often driven by artists' work.
“Unfortunately, when it comes to art, we have fundamentally different perspectives and points of view, because in tech there's a strong history of open source and people just think, if you put it out there, people will use it,” Chang said. “For artists, it's part of who we are and our identity. I wouldn't want my best friend to modify my work without my permission. There are nuances in 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 piracy also extends to Cara, which has partnered with the University of Chicago's Glaze project. By using Glaze, artists who submit their work to Cara have an extra layer of protection against AI scraping.
Other projects are also stepping up to protect artists. Artist-led company Spawning AI has created an API to allow artists to remove their work from popular datasets. But this opt-out only works if the companies that use those datasets respect the artists' requests. So far, HuggingFace and Stability have agreed to respect Spawning's Do Not Train registry, but it cannot retroactively remove an artist's work from an already-trained model.
“I think there is a clash between context and expectations of what you put on the internet,” Zhang said. “For artists, they want to share their work with the world. We put our work online and we don't charge people to see it, but that doesn't mean we give up our copyright or ownership of our work.”
Image credit: Cara
Zhang, an avid Go player and fan, discovered the potential of AI eight years ago when Google's AlphaGo system defeated Lee Sedol, one of the world's best Go players.
“We'll never have the same experience as we had before AlphaGo,” Zhang said. “The beauty and mystique of Go was wanting to see how far a human could play, and how entertaining it could be. Now, beating an AI would be the ultimate achievement.”
But what's even more disappointing is that in a recent interview with Google, Sedol said that if AlphaGo had existed when he was younger, he might not have become a professional Go player.
“Lee Sedol has had an enormous impact on the history of Go, is an icon of our time and a role model to me, so if I had to choose again, it breaks my heart beyond words to hear him say that he will never be able to go professional because of AI,” Zhang explained in a blog post.
But Zhang’s interest in Go helped him think early on about how AI might impact his career as an artist.
Cara isn't Zhang's first attempt at building an artist-friendly social network, but good timing aside, Zhang thinks Cara is more likely to stick around for the long term because of his own growth as a founder: From running an esports team to participating in Stanford University's Ignite program, Zhang learned how to work in groups.
“I think it's experience and maturity. You can learn from previous experiences,” she says. “In my case, I was an athlete representing Singapore and then I became a photographer, and in both cases I did very well in the particular field I chose to be in. However, these were very personal motivations and I had to be very good myself. My teamwork wasn't the best.”
Image credit: Cara
Cara is currently experiencing a breakthrough moment, but this surge in popularity hasn't come without struggles.
Founded in late 2022, Cara is completely bootstrapped, with much of its engineering support provided by volunteers. Any company would struggle to handle an unexpected 1525% increase in users, but even more so one operating with such a small team.
On Wednesday, Zhang opened her email and got a nasty shock: her bill from web hosting company Vercel came to $96,280 for the past week. After Zhang posted about the charges on X, Vercel's vice president of product, Lee Robinson, responded publicly, claiming that his team had tried to reach out to her in advance, but that Zhang had been so busy with the rapid growth of the platform that she missed the email from Vercel.
“My team and I are standing by and ready to work with you to ensure your app runs as efficiently as possible on our infrastructure,” Robinson wrote to Chan on X. But it's unclear how the matter will play out and whether it will put Cara on life support.
Chang told TechCrunch that he isn't seeking venture funding because he doesn't want to be accountable to outside investors, and that finding angel investors who are committed to supporting the interests of artists can be a challenge.
The next few weeks may be crucial for Cara, but at least Chan has a community of like-minded artists on her side.
“Making a product is a bit like making art,” she says. “You just make what you love, and you know not everyone is going to like it, but people who share the same perspective will love it, and you can grow a community from there.”