Since late 2022 there has been a new trend of using AI tools such as Stable Diffusion or Midjourney to create "art." For those not in the know about how these technologies work, these AI tools take images from a database (one that many people can feed more images into) and use those images from the database to create "new" and "original" images.

On paper, this kind of technology sounds quite incredible, almost too good to be true. Give the machine a prompt about the type of image you want, the style, colors, etc., and it will give you the image you've been imagining in your head.

However, much like how NFTs caused an increase in art theft and scamming artists out of money, AI "art" does this exact thing, but somehow with even fewer protections towards artists. More often than not, the databases these technologies are using for their prompts consist of stolen artwork or artwork fed into the machine against the artist's wishes. One can simply upload an artist's work, tag it with their name for the style, and now others can also use that artist's name to "create" pieces using that artist's work as a base for the AI. There are no regulations or guidelines to what gets uploaded into the databases for the AI, time and time again artists have found blatant generations of their artwork without their permission.

It's a bleak world.
Already I've been seeing people mentioning that their workplaces have started using AI to generate things for them so they don't have to hire and pay a professional artist for it. Even worse, there was a case where an artist on Twitter quit their job in tears after finding out that not only did the higher-ups at their job start using AI generation, but that all the past work they had done at the job had been fed into the database without their consent.

There's been a rise in AI "artists" offering, often poorly masked, AI-generated work to make a quick dollar off of consumers who otherwise wouldn't know about AI images and only see the low price they're offered at. These "artists" will blatantly rip off popular artists with higher commission rates and advertise these AI illustrations as a more affordable version of the original artist's work.

Similar to this, some people have started to commission artists to get a sketch preview of their commission, cancel that commission to get a refund, and then feed the unfinished piece into the AI generator of their choice to get a "free" commission from the artist.

Artists that are very publicly and loudly against AI have often had their art fed into the databases as a form of harassment, being sent hateful messages and at worst, death threats.

In any other line of creative work worth its salt, this would without a doubt be considered plagiarism, plain and simple.

Unless the databases AI pulls from can 100% be certified to be made up of pieces that are fed into it with the full knowledge, consent, and re-compensation of participating artists, it can never be ethical and it can never be considered anything else other than theft. All arguments in favor fall apart in this aspect.

So, How do we protect ourselves?

Honestly, it's a bit difficult. But not impossible.

There are no easy solutions with how fast this technology advances. I don't say this to bring gloom and doom, but it's just the reality we live in at the moment. The people who look to make a quick buck off of our hard work will always spend more time advancing these technologies rather than using that time to pick up a pencil and develop a new skill.

Right now, technologies are being developed to fight back and protect our art. Applications such as Glaze make it so that artwork treated with it has less of a chance of accurately being re-created by AI generators. It doesn't stop the feeding of one's artwork into the machine, but it makes it more annoying to work around.

There are also things we as artists can do to protect ourselves, or at least slow down the amount of theft and generation that is made.

Watermark your work.
I know it's not a solution favored by a lot of artists, It's an extra step that can take away from showcasing your artwork nicely and cleanly, however, I truly feel that the pros outweigh the cons at this point. People can always erase watermarks, but it's an extra step that will deter most people at first glance.
Bigger and more intrusive watermarks will deter most thieves, however, it will be up to each artist to decide how big and intrusive their watermark will be for each piece. If you can't think of one, go for something simple such as your username + link to a personal site or your active social media handle.
If you aren't confident in your design skills for an effective watermark, many artists have put up free-to-use watermarks others can customize to fit their own needs.

Low-Quality Versions of your art for posting on social media is another solution.
This is already a practice that should be more commonly done by artists to prevent art from being stolen and resized for printing by art thieves. Saving in lower quality as well as saving pieces as a lower quality JPEG will also prevent people from wanting to feed that artwork into AI because of how it looks.
It can be annoying to have to make a significantly smaller and slightly worse-looking version of your art online, but it's just another solution that is less intrusive than watermarking (though I highly recommend putting the two together.) Start getting into the habit of making Social Media versions of your artwork to post.

Education and Awareness
This one is weird admittedly. Many artists who post online have an audience in some shape or form. For the average person who goes online to look up artwork or fan art, the struggle of AI art is almost completely invisible to them or full of information that they don't have the context for. When you're online a lot, it's very easy to believe that a struggle that is completely visible and understandable to us is mainstream. In our online circles, it certainly feels that way, but in the grand scheme of things and life outside of our online spaces, most people aren't aware. That's where education comes into play.
Showing fans of your works why you oppose such technologies and the reason behind them can go a long way. The more artists make a visible point of being against AI art, the more likely the people that enjoy looking at these pieces will have that knowledge in their heads and, hopefully, make informed decisions when it comes to AI art as well as spreading it to their friend groups.
This won't work on everyone though. Sadly, for every group of people that become educated and informed on this matter, there will always be a few who simply do not care enough. It's impossible to make everyone agree on one thing and it's sad, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth it.

Nothing short of simply never showing your artwork publicly will 100% protect your art but taking the effort to minimize the likelihood of it happening is completely in your control. I truly believe it's worth taking those extra steps in a world that is determined to undermine the work and value of art.