When AI “Poisons” AI: What You Need To Know About Nightshade

The enemy of my enemy could very well be my friend. Or rather, artists and content creators the world over may now count an AI tool as their friend against ‘enemy’ Gen AI models. Called Nightshade, the free AI tool is now available for download, announced Chicago University’s The Glaze Project scientists--people who have built the AI tool–on Twitter.

Nightshade is designed to prevent Gen AI models from being used to train on any artist’s work without their permission. The free-to-use AI tool is developed by a team of scientists from Chicago University led by Prof. Ben Zhao and Shawn Shan. Other prominent members of the Nightshade AI developement team include Wenxin Ding, Josephine Passananti, and Prof. Heather Zheng. Many also artists collaborated with the team on The Nightshade Project.

The Nightshade Team previously worked on The Glaze Project. It wanted to design an AI program for artists and content owners which would prevent Gen AI models from mimicking their art styles. The result was Glaze. But while Glaze was designed as a defensive tool, Nightshade is an offensive one and designed to “poison” Gen AI models so that they are forced to load artwork that’s largely and significantly different than the original one.

How Does Nightshade AI Tool Work?

According to the Chicago University scientists, Nightshade “poisons” or distorts the unauthorized art/image samples Gen AI models pick up for training. After Nightshade is used, the AI models would see something different from the original art.

For the human eye, the distorted image will appear as a shaded one, with only a slight change in the original. The AI model, conversely, would see some big changes in the original image. For example, if the original image shows a cow in a green field, then, with the Nightshade AI tool deployed, human eyes “might see a shaded image of a cow in a green field largely unchanged, but an AI model might see a large leather purse lying in the grass.”, the developers said in a post on Nightshade website.

<img alt="Nightshade posions unauthorized art samples by Gen AI models" data- data-src="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/echo/1-9.png" data- data-wp-effect="effects.core.image.setButtonStyles" data-wp-effect–setstylesonresize="effects.core.image.setStylesOnResize" data-wp-init="effects.core.image.initOriginImage" data-wp-on–click="actions.core.image.showLightbox" data-wp-on–load="actions.core.image.handleLoad" decoding="async" height="400" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”800″>

If the AI model is used to train on a set of such Nightshade-distorted images, it will “become increasingly convinced” that the cows in the original pic are actually leather purses.

Nightshade AI: Less “Poison” For Now

According to the developers, they have only used a “low-intensity setting” for artists who want to prioritize “the visual quality of the original image” to preclude “negative consequences for the image owner.” Image owners would see more visible changes when they use Nightshade on “art with flat colors and smooth backgrounds.”

The Chicago University scientist team also adds: “Nightshade is unlikely to stay future proof over long periods of time. But as an attack, Nightshade can easily evolve to continue to keep pace with any potential countermeasures/defenses.”

<img alt="Nightshade has a low-intensity setting" data- data-src="https://kirelos.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/echo/2-9.png" data- data-wp-effect="effects.core.image.setButtonStyles" data-wp-effect–setstylesonresize="effects.core.image.setStylesOnResize" data-wp-init="effects.core.image.initOriginImage" data-wp-on–click="actions.core.image.showLightbox" data-wp-on–load="actions.core.image.handleLoad" decoding="async" height="400" src="data:image/svg xml,” width=”800″>

Nightshade: What The Developers Advise

Nightshade v1.0 is an offensive AI tool and does not provide protection against style mimcry, like the defense-focused Glaze, caution the developers. Hence, they advise content owners looking to prevent generative AI models from mimicking their style not to post shaded images of their art.

The Nightshade developers are working on how to make Nightshade AI tool work alongside Glaze, so that in future, they can release the offensive AI tool on Webglaze as an add-on. That way, artists would be able to use both Glaze and Nightshade together on a single artwork/image, say the developers.

For now, Nightshade v1.0 will work as a standalone tool. The developers have provided technical papers and user guide for the AI-poisoning tool on their website.

In other AI-related news, a recent research paper by the IMF has warned that Artificial Intelligence is going to have a far-reaching impact on the job market, with a large percentage of jobs getting affected.

• Winner of The 21st Century Emily Dickinson Award for his debut book ‘The Heart of Heartbeats’, Utkarsh found his calling to be a writer while studying engineering and has been writing professionally for over six years now. After completing… read more