Question to the experts: if I start posting my creative output on #Mastodon, will it be used to train #AI?

[oblomov@sociale.network]

@sero_one Mastodon servers have no AI features, so not in that sense. However, if you post publicly, your posts are visible on the web like any web image, so they may get scraped by third parties and used to train models like any other image on the web.
I do not know of any Mastodon (or any other Fediverse platform) with built-in support for AI poisoning services, but I'm guessing you could use them by yourself before uploading?

[sero_one@mastodon.social]

@oblomov Yes, thank you! Poisoning before uploading seems to be the way to go right now. I'll run some of my pictures through Glaze (mimicry protection) and Nightshade (model poisoning) to see how it affects them.

[sero_one@mastodon.social]

@oblomov Follow-up: ugh... Glaze and Nightshade are not available for download for Linux. There's a portfolio service called Cara (cara.app) which has Glaze support integrated, buuut: "Cara Glaze is currently unavailable due to an abuse incident." Not a great situation so far.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@zleap @sero_one

There's nothing on Mastodon itself scraping stuff, but anything you post with a public visibility will be visible to the entire internet and may be scraped by AI bots or other bots.

You can set your posts to have restricted visibility to make it more difficult for bots to see it. More info about post visibilities at https://fedi.tips/who-can-see-my-posts-in-mastodon-how-do-i-send-dms-in-mastodon/

[zleap@techhub.social]

@FediTips @sero_one

Thanks for clarifying ?

[enthusiast101@ieji.de]

@sero_one
If the goal is to post it publicly but still protect against scrapers, then it might be worth looking for a service that protects against AI scrapers and hosting your art there, and then putting the link to the art in your mastodon post.

As for the service, you could put it behind a website you set up, that is protected by Anubis and/or other scrapper blockers. Though there may be platforms that already do this for you.

It won't be as direct as simply putting the art on mastodon, so its up to you if such a setup will be worth it.

[sero_one@mastodon.social]

@enthusiast101 Thank you, I'll look into this. Any obvious recommendations for such platforms? I already found #cara (cara.app) which includes Glaze, but (a) that part is currently disabled and (b) it's (afaict) not guaranteed that Glaze really helps.

[sero_one@mastodon.social]

@zleap @FediTips Thank you @FediTips! I understand the visibility options and how Mastodon, by design, can't protect against all forms of scraping, no matter how much I wish there was a simple silver bullet. ️

[zleap@techhub.social]

@sero_one @FediTips

No problem

I think people who scrape data, work on a basis of 'assumed consent' if you make a pinned post saying all posts are your Intellectual property (unless otherwise stated) and you do NOT give consent for scraping or download of that data. It may mitigate against the assumption people can 'just' scrape your posts.

I am not a legal expert.

[feditips@social.growyourown.services]

@sero_one @zleap

There are ways to say you don't give permission for it to be used, but the scrapers seem to just ignore them and scrape anything publicly visible

AI bots also scrape pirate sites, so they know they're using stuff without permission but don't care. And it's worse than piracy because they're removing the original creator's credit and pretending it's a new work generated by the AI.