Cara: The app that resists artificial intelligence

For technophobes, technocrats, artists as well as ordinary users of social media, one thing is certain: conquer the world. artificial intelligence Its applications in our daily lives are here; It’s discussed at Sunday dinner tables, provokes thought in boardrooms, draws the ire of content creators, and spawns sometimes terrifying and sometimes funny memes in Reddit groups. It also creates the conditions for alternatives to exist in the brave new world that is currently taking shape.

One example of this is the Cara app, which promises to display content of an artistic nature while touting that it will protect creators’ copyrights from the controversial tactics of META and Mark Zuckerberg. Results; Tens of thousands of artists have already made the switch. “I would like an AI to do the dishes and laundry so I can do my art and write, not an AI to do the art and writing so I can do the dishes and laundry,” noted March 29 X Fantasy author Joanna Matzejewska. The post has since been shared 3 million times.

Anti-scratch shield

the Kara It appeared a year ago and promised to showcase creative content while banning any work created by TN. Additionally, he claims that through his collaboration with another startup, Glaze, he has been able to protect these original projects from being extracted by companies collecting data to create artificial intelligence.

Behind Cara is the 36-year-old Chinese-born photographer Zhang Jingna And a small group of developers: “We artists want to share our work with the world. We put it online, and we don’t charge people to see it, but that doesn’t mean we give them copyright or any ownership of our work,” he says in an interview with TechCrunch.

In recent months, after He admitted to using photos and videos from Instagram to train AI models from the content found there. In fact, Facebook and Instagram users outside of Europe don’t even have the ability to opt out (exclude themselves) from having their content collected. But even in Europe, where there is stricter data protection legislation, META has made it so difficult to opt out, it’s almost as if it doesn’t exist.

Precisely because of the above development, Kara caught fire about 10 days ago. So where the app, which was released in mobile and desktop formats, counted 40,000 “downloads” in one year, within a week it jumped to 700,000, while now, after a few weeks of hype, it reaches 1 million users. “When TN rubs it in their faces too much, and then gives them the option to opt out, but then makes it very difficult for them, they get angry,” she says of the exodus of artists from Instagram to Cara. Kara’s interface screen is a mix Instagram And X (formerly Twitter) and allows users to view and create visual content (visual works only, not photos), and to speak through Type X.

Zhang insists that technologists have a completely different view of copyright than artists. “In art, unfortunately, we have a very different view on creativity. Those of you in technology, you have a history of open source, and you argue by the logic of, ‘If it exists, it’s available for people to use.’ But for artists, it’s a part of ourselves.” And our identity. I don’t want my best friend to mess with my work without asking. I don’t think people understand that the art we make is not productive,” the photographer concludes.