Navigating Cara, AI Scrapers, and Protecting Human Art
Cara is a wonderful platform for anyone who creates or appreciates art. You can find almost every medium represented there—from photography and stained glass to watercolor, traditional hand drawing, and digital illustration.
Recently, however, Cara was hit by scraper bots. This hit the community hard because Cara was specifically designed as a safe haven where artists could showcase their work without fear of generative AI scraping it.
The Challenge of Fighting Tech Giants
The reality is that Cara supports a massive community—roughly 1.5 to 2 million artists. But we are up against tech giants with trillions of dollars in resources and massive legal teams at their disposal. Even when artists unite, stopping unauthorized web scraping completely is an uphill battle.
The founder of Cara, Jingna Zhang (known online as Zemotion), created the platform alongside a small team of developers to build an anti-AI portfolio space that protects human creators. To strengthen this mission, she partnered with Professor Ben Zhao’s research team at the University of Chicago to integrate Glaze directly into Cara.
Glaze adds invisible mathematical noise to digital artwork. To human eyes, the art looks completely normal, but AI scrapers reading the file get confused and cannot properly copy or mimic the artist's style. Because running Glaze locally requires a heavy graphics card, integrating it into Cara’s cloud servers made style protection accessible to everyone without needing expensive hardware.
When the scraping incidents occurred, some users placed the blame on Jingna Zhang. But that isn't fair. Cara is still in beta, and the reality of the modern internet is that 100% security against aggressive automated scrapers is nearly impossible for any single platform.
Feeding the Scrapers "Inferior Product"
Because of how the internet operates today, I simply operate under the assumption that anything uploaded online will eventually encounter a scraper. To adapt, I take a proactive approach with my work for Serenity of the Mind:
Visible Copyright Overlay: I apply a clear copyright mark across my backgrounds and graphic elements.
Low-Resolution Uploads: I upload display images at a much lower resolution.
If a scraper bot steals my work, it only retrieves an inferior, low-res version with text embedded into the visual data. In a small way, this feeds low-quality information back into generative models, frustrating the cycle of automated slop.
Supporting Real Human Creativity
As human creators and art appreciators, our best path forward is to support human-made work in all its forms—whether that is writing, painting, or hand-drawn design. We support the creative ecosystem by choosing non-AI, authentic human effort over shortcut generative content.
Connect & Support:
Watch: If you enjoy cat compilations, painting process videos, and behind-the-scenes content, visit our YouTube channel at Serenity of the Mind.
Shop: You can support our work directly at store.serenityofthemind.com, where we offer hand-painted watercolor backgrounds, graphics, and animated graphics (GIFs).
Reference List
Platforms & Protection Tools
Cara: Anti-AI portfolio platform and social network for artists founded by photographer Jingna Zhang (cara.app).
Glaze: Free style-protection software developed by Professor Ben Zhao’s research team at the University of Chicago (glaze.cs.uchicago.edu). Confuses AI scrapers by adding invisible mathematical noise to digital image files.
Nightshade: Complementary tool from the Glaze team at UChicago that alters image pixels to disrupt generative AI model training data.
Resources & Links Mentioned in This Post:
Cara Portfolio Platform: cara.app
Glaze Style Protection Tool: University of Chicago SAND Lab (glaze.cs.uchicago.edu)
Serenity of the Mind Shop: store.serenityofthemind.com
YouTube Channel: Serenity of the Mind on YouTube
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