Nightshade, a free tool letting artists “poison” AI models that attempt to train on their artwork without permission, is now available to download on Mac and PC
It's here: months after it was first announced, Nightshade, a new, free software tool allowing artists to “poison” …
The significance is practical rather than legal: artists can now act at the point where they publish work, while model developers face a new source-quality risk in training data. Later coverage of growing demand for Glaze despite bypass concerns underscores both the appeal and the limits of technical defenses.
First-order effects
Artists on Mac and PC can apply Nightshade before sharing artwork, giving them a no-cost deterrent against models trained on those files without permission.
AI developers that ingest public artwork may face degraded or unreliable training inputs when poisoned files enter their data pipelines.
Second-order effects
Model builders and dataset suppliers have greater incentive to screen, curate, and document visual-training inputs rather than treat publicly accessible art as frictionless data.
Artists and platforms may pair defensive tools with clearer publishing and licensing choices, increasing the operational gap between authorized and indiscriminate data collection.
Third-order effects
If adoption persists, training-data provenance becomes a competitive capability for generative-AI providers, not merely a policy or reputational issue.
The tool points to an escalating technical contest between creator-controlled protections and methods to detect or bypass them; its durability depends on whether protections remain effective in practice.
The trend: Generative-AI training is moving toward a contested data-governance model in which creators deploy technical controls alongside demands for permission and accountability.
#Nightshade is not illegal...it will not damage anyones PC...this is an attempt to discourage creatives from using it so they can continue to steal your labour! We adapted to their exploitation...Keep protecting your work, photos & your art! https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/ ..…
#nightshade Pro tip: use Nightshade on everything you upload online (not only your art), social media pictures, daily photos about your meal, family, puppies, kittens, random selfies and street shots - and let the game begin.
Quick notes 1. probably not best idea to announce an image as poison, kinda defeats the purpose 2. a shaded image is not glazed. If you want protection from mimicry, do not post your art with only nightshade. 3. NS is memory sensitive. If u have big apps running, close them first
The demand for nightshade has been off the charts. Global Requests have actually saturated our campus network link. (No dos attack, just legit downloads). We are adding two fast mirror links for nightshade binaries. Win: https://d2cusatv9jv1nt.cloudfront.net/ ... Mac: https://d2c…
Ahahah the cope is insane. Dude is legit arguing against glazing your images because it's ‘illegal’ in his eyes. He compared it to having his PC hacked because it ‘disrupts his operation’ I am delighted [image]
Artists...suggestion, once you Nightshade and Glaze your art all you need to do is upload it to all the sites that you used before, Artstation etc. those are all still being scraped, it will get sucked up. Also..be a good way to pay Adobe back for their treachery w/firefly.
Today is the day. Nightshade v1.0 is ready. Performance tuning is done, UI fixes are done. You can download Nightshade v1.0 from https://nightshade.cs.uchicago.edu/ Please read the what-is page and also the User's Guide on how to run Nightshade. It is a bit more involved than Gla…
@sini4ka111 Short answer: yes. But you can also run on longer rendering. And since it's poison, you don't *need* to use it if it looks too strong for your art style.
A heads up to artists uploading their portfolio on the internet. Here are two tools to safeguard your work that is being scraped by trainers for generative AIs without your permission. * Nightshade - poison sample your data. * Glaze - protect from style mimicry. [1/3] [image]
@TheGlazeProject Hi! I've tested Nightshade at my painting and I'm a bit confused. Is this supposed to look like this, with this much artefacts? [image]
Nightshade is out! Nightshade poisons AI models if your art or images are taken without permission, Glaze protects you from AI mimicry. It's recommended you Nightshade first, then Glaze. A version that does both is coming. Read this thread for more info. Go get 'em 🫡 [image]
Keep in mind that #Nightshade and its sibling #Glaze are technological measures as defined by the DMCA that control access to a work (to ensure proper licensing), and circumventing them would be a violation of 17 U.S. Code §1201. https://www.law.cornell.edu/ ... [image]
Folks. This version does not include glaze. We will work on an integrated version of glaze+ns. For now if you want benefits of both, you should shade first, glaze last. But note that artifacts might be more visible. The integrated version will fix this issue.
@arvalis Same perturbations budget. So mathematically it's identical or less visible than glaze. We actually allow lower intensity effects than glaze. Less poison is ok but less protection is not. But you can look in the paper for examples. https://arxiv.org/...
Highly recommend you read the User's Guide to understand how to use the poison tag. NS is very similar to Glaze in general tools used. So the usual robustness applies. Cropping, resampling, compression etc etc have minimal impact on NS poison. Have fun!
Nightshade and Glaze never claimed to be the answer to every AI problem. It's a way for artists to protect their work, establish consequences for violating consent, and feel comfortable posting their work online again.