sMARt Methods aimed at Art LArceny DEfence

ongoing

The issue of potential copyright infringement by big AI companies has been under the spotlight for quite some time now. Cartoonists and illustrators have long been urging legislators to address copyright issues. In Europe, the AI Act has opened the path to legislation on this issue, but the work on regulation is just beginning. Meanwhile, to protect online drawings, some technical solutions have been introduced: data poisoning (Nightshade), IP masking (Glaze), and others (Kudurru). All these solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, but none of them, to date, allows users to decide whether to actually hand over their works to AI companies for a fee. As part of the CoNFiTure project, funded by Creative Europe in 2022, Alphabet Formation has created an NFT marketplace for cartoonists, allowing them to buy and sell digital or digitized illustrations. However, at the time of the project's preparation, the AI issue was still looming. Therefore, Alphabet now aims to integrate data protection technology into the marketplace, but allowing artists to choose whether to sell their art to scraping software via a smart contract. This protection will be tested through an experiment on images provided by an animation industry partner, who will upload images from the production of two animated shorts—one focusing on environmental sustainability and the other on inclusivity. These shorts will then be showcased during the Bridge of Peace film festival in a mixed physical and digital format.