ArtGuard

Project Introduction

Our team is developing ArtGuard, ArtGuard is a web platform designed to help artists protect their work in the age of AI. It provides a centralized hub where creators can learn about AI art scraping, rate and review websites, and engage in discussions with other artists. By combining education, reporting, and community collaboration, ArtGuard empowers artists to make informed decisions, safeguard their artwork, and connect with peers to share strategies and experiences.

Sponsored By

Andres Sepulveda Morales
Founder / Creating Technologist
Red Mage Creative Technologies

• Andres does consulting work, and has a passion for educating people on how AI works and how it can be beneficial to them.
• His efforts are often focused on community outreach: Rocky Mountain AI Interest Group and Fort Collins AI for Everyone.
• He has seen the frustrations that artists have to deal with, but his reach is limited.
• He wants to create something to help protect artists from having their work used without their permission.

Problem Description

• AI changes so quickly that creating an AI countermeasure isn't feasible for a small team.
• Even if it were, it would quickly be outdated.
• It can be difficult for an artist to figure out what they can do by themselves.
• Some sites put in more effort to protect their users than others.
• Here is our official Capstone project proposal as originally described

Solution Overview

• A site/tool to provide users with the relevant info about AI, and also allows them to share their own experiences/efforts.
• Would likely take the form of a website, with browser extensions and an executable program being possible.
• Our aim is to get people together to educate them and raise awareness.

These are small snippets of our project, to see a more detailed problem description and solution overview navigate to the Project page.

Development Plan

• Requirements Acquisition/Refinement
  • To acquire and refine requirements, our weekly workflow will involve regular reviews by members of the team to make sure that what we're working on follows the requirements.
  • Each week we will look at our work for the previous and upcoming weeks and go over our requirements list to ensure that they're followed.
• Technical Investigation
  • The site/programs will have to be streamlined, user-friendly, and responsive.
  • We will have to maintain a forum where users can be anonymous or identified, and keep that information relevant and safe.
  • Based on the project's scope, we could end up dealing with website APIs to coordinate our listings.
• Other Problems
  • We have to understand how image generation models work and how they gather training data.
  • We have to communicate with a community userbase.

Our Advisor

Our Advisor is Bailey Hall, thanks to her we are able work on our project in a timely manner, as she helps us stay on task and work towards reasonable goals in a fair amount of time. Bailey is currently an Informatics Graduate and is helping mentor multiple teams in the CS476 Capstone Class.

Conclusion

Instead of trying to do this ourselves, we want to stage a platform for the community to engage with, to better themselves and others.