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For many artists, it is an uncertain time to publish art online. AI image generators continue to get better at cheaply replicating a wider range of unique styles, and basically every popular platform is rushing to update user terms to seize permissions to delete as much data as possible for AI training .

There are defenses against AI learning, such as Glaze, a tool that adds a small amount of human-imperceptible noise to images to prevent image generators from copying artists’ styles. But they don’t provide a permanent solution at a time when tech companies seem determined to chase profits by building increasingly sophisticated AI models that increasingly threaten to dilute artists’ brands and replace them in the marketplace.

In one high-profile example just last month, the estate of Ansel Adams sued Adobe for selling AI images stealing the famed photographer’s style, the Smithsonian reported. Adobe quickly responded and removed the AI ​​mimics. But not only well-known artists are at risk of being scammed, lesser-known artists may find it difficult to prove that AI models refer to their works. In this largely lawless world, every image uploaded risks contributing to the artist’s downfall, potentially reducing demand for his own work every time he advertises new work online.

Unsurprisingly, artists are increasingly seeking protection to reduce or avoid these AI risks. As tech companies update their product terms — as when Meta suddenly announced it was training AI on a billion Facebook and Instagram user photos last December — artists are frantically surveying the landscape for new protections. Therefore, considered one of the few AI defenses available today, The Glaze Project has recently seen a dramatic spike in requests for its free tools.

Designed to help prevent style mimicry and even poison AI models to discourage data deletion without artist consent or compensation, The Glaze Project’s tools are now more in demand than ever. University of Chicago professor Ben Zhao, who created the tools, told Ars that the backlog of approving a “jumping” number of access requests is “bad.” And as he recently posted on X (formerly Twitter), June’s “explosion in demand” is likely to continue as AI threats continue to evolve. For the foreseeable future, this means that artists looking for protection against AI will have to wait.

Even if Zhao’s team does nothing but approve requests for WebGlaze, its web-based, invite-only version of Glaze, “we still probably won’t make it,” Zhao said. He warned X artists to expect delays.

Compounding artists’ struggles, at the same time that demand for Glaze is growing, the tool has come under fire from security researchers who claim that it is not only possible, but easy to bypass Glaze’s protections. For security researchers and some artists, this attack calls into question whether Glaze can really protect artists in these trying times. But for thousands of artists joining Glaze’s queue, the long-term future looks so bleak that any promise of protection against mimicry seems worth the wait.

Smashing Glaze attack sparks debate

Millions have already downloaded Glaze, and many artists wait weeks or even months to access WebGlaze, mostly by submitting invitation requests on social media. The Glaze project checks each request to verify that each user is human and to ensure that bad actors aren’t abusing the tools, so the process can take some time.

The team is currently struggling to approve hundreds of requests submitted daily via direct messages on Instagram and Twitter in the order in which they are received, and artists seeking access must be patient with lengthy delays. Because inboxes on these platforms aren’t designed for easy message sorting, any artist who follows up on a request is bumped to the end of the queue — as their message bounces to the top of the inbox and Zhao’s team, mostly volunteers, moves on to approve requests from the bottom up.

“This is clearly a problem,” Zhao wrote to X, while discouraging artists from sending follow-up messages unless they’ve already received an invite. “We may need to change the way we send invitations and rethink the future of WebGlaze to keep it sustainable enough to support a large and growing user base.”

Interest in the frosting is also likely to increase due to word of mouth. Reid Southen, a freelance concept artist for major motion pictures, advocates for all artists to use Glaze. Reid told Ars that WebGlaze is especially “nice” because it’s “available for free to people who don’t have the GPU power to run the program on their home machine.”