Aeltarnen

First to establish the rules: to get an official reply from the commission and possibly legislation, an initiative needs 1 million signatures within 1 year AND at least 7 different countries need to hit their threshold which is calculated based on population (idk how it's calculated but a little more than 1 in 1000 adult citizens of the country need to sign to hit its threshold). This is to ensure that not all the support for an initiative comes from one or very few countries.

Ok so here's the graph for signatures that the conversion therapy ban got over time according to the wayback machine:

The deadline is in 2 days as I write this and there's a MASSIVE last minute push! 415,223 signatures to go still but the last update to the website added about 360,000 all at once. I think it might still be possible after all.

IF YOU DRAW OR DESIGN Instead of PHOTOSHOP, try GIMP Instead of LIGHTROOM, try PAINT.DOT.NET Instead of ILLUSTRATOR, try INKSCAPE Instead of INDESIGN, try CANVA or SCRIBUS

IF YOU MAKE PICTURES MOVE Instead of PREMIERE, try DAVINCI RESOLVE Instead of ANIMATE/FLASH, try OPENTOONZ or BLENDER Instead of AFTER EFFECTS, try WAX, BLENDER or FUSION

IF YOU BUILD WEBSITES OR SOFTWARE Instead of DREAMWAVER, SPARK or XD, try WIX, WEEBLY, or WORDPRESS.COM or WORDPRESS.ORG

IF YOU DO STUFF THAT REQUIRES THESE OTHER PROGRAMS Instead of AUDITION, try AUDACITY Instead of ACROBAT PRO, try FOXIT READER or PDF ESCAPE Instead of INCOPY, try LOVING YOURSELF AND USING LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE (WHO USES THIS???)

IF YOU NEED STOCK PHOTOS OR FONTS Instead of ADOBE STOCK, try PEXELS, UNSPLASH, or PIXABAY Instead of ADOBE PHONTS, try GOOGLE FONTS or DAFONT

BONUS: If you need FREE MUSIC OR SOUND EFFECTS, try YOUTUBE AUDIO LIBRARY or SOUNDBIBLE

My bonuses:

IF YOU DRAW OR DESIGN Instead of PHOTOSHOP, try FIREALPACA , SAI , SKETCHBOOK or KRITA (these latter two are great!) Instead of LIGHTROOM, try PHOTOSCAPE

IF YOU MAKE PICTURES MOVE Instead of PREMIERE, try SHOTCUT Instead of ANIMATE/FLASH, try PENCIL2D ANIMATION, LIVE2D, OR E-MOTE

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

&

The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)

It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).

Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE--which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists--small or big).

It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.

The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing--it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).

It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)

It currently works best on painterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)

IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).

Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)

The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)

When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers ---> You and NOT Team servers <--->You) One-way data street.

Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replaced the front-end code with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)

The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles

From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)