#art theft

[iguanodonwildman]

Hey! Just a reminder! AO3 does NOT have an app. This garbage was made by theives who steal fan artist’s work and sell it back to you.

“Oh, but it’s free!” There are ads. They are making money off of this. They are stealing from the creators you love and you are hurting those same creators if you use this app or any similar app.

Don’t use it. Report it at every opportunity.

[squiddokiddo]

Ah yes using stolen fanart and making your ads look like posts from Tumblr users to promote your shitty AI chat programme. Sure.

I'm so sick of seeing these man, I hope this slop fucking crumbles.

[straycatj]

Recently, one of Oliver Clegg’s “works” came to my attention again.

It left me with deep pain and sadness.

I have no intention of blaming the person who posted it, nor those who informed me. But—

Please take a moment to imagine:

What if a photo you love—of something, someone, or some animal you hold dear—

was traced without permission, presented as someone else’s artwork, renamed, and

spread further by well-meaning people, ultimately generating income for someone else?

This is not just between me and him. It could happen to any of us, at any time, with someone like him.

I have consulted a lawyer specializing in international copyright through a project supported by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs.

I understand some people still say “it’s not a big deal.”

That is exactly why I’d like to share a few facts:

His actions are tracing, which is different from imitation or reference.

At least for my photo, this cannot be considered fair use.

His website is accessible from Japan, and therefore infringes upon Japanese copyright.

My rights are protected internationally under the Berne Convention.

I am not trying to stop anyone from appreciating his work.

But I do want the facts to be recognized.

Oliver Clegg is still clearly and deliberately violating both the law and the rights of individuals.

As those who follow my work may know, neither of my cats is named “Rocky.”

I have identified at least seven of his images as traced.

On April 30th (JST), I informed his gallery and requested an investigation.

I sent a follow-up on May 3rd, asking for a response by the end of business on May 6th (local time).

To date, I have received no reply.

Perhaps they believe the words of a Japanese blogger are not worth acknowledging.

So be it.

Let me be clear: I am not seeking compensation or an apology.

All I want is for people to understand that this is a repeated pattern of appropriation.

Among the seven traced works:

One is my own photo.

One is the work of Staice Shitanda, as shared with me.

One is a Getty-managed image. If that is the only image he sought permission for, it would suggest a disregard for individual rights.

One is a published book image.

One comes from a private blog, even if it later became a meme.

One appears across Pinterest and social media, but originates from an individual's SNS post.

One features a well-known Japanese cat, for which I personally contacted their official in 2023 and was told they had never been approached by Clegg.

These images all match in composition and linework, and cannot reasonably be considered imitation or reference.

While I will not repost the artwork or comparison images here, I am prepared to share my documentation with media or art professionals who wish to investigate further.

2025.5.7　straycatj

[dduane]

Why Do So Many Museums Hold a Convicted Antiquity Dealer’s Treasures?

After The Met returned a Roman bust connected to Phoenix Ancient Art, the question of what will happen to other works sold by the gallery to

A long read that will turn your brains right around in your head at the lengths people will go to to (a) steal stuff and (b) make loads of money at it.

[louistonehill]

A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. 

The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.   

AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond. 

Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows. 

Continue reading article here

[morteraphan]

Do you want to see some double down? Because I have something for you guys 💀 (yes, this is a conversation with a person who traced 38 of my artworks)

"Yes, 38 of our pictures matched line for line, but this is the first time I see you and your drawings, it's AMAZING how similar our ideas!"

You know, I've dealt with tracing and stealing of my art a lot in recent years. I usually deal with it privately and just move on. But THIS… this is a whole new level of arrogance and lies for me. I literally expected any explanation, justification and apology, but not this.

"It’s bad luck that I entered into the art world just before AI came out."

This also made me furious because we have A TON of young artists who REALLY struggles because of AI shit and this one, who LITERALLY use AI, play a victim. I thought my last post would be the end of this story, but this double down just completely pissed me off. Just in case, I'll remind you that no, this is not a minor, not a schoolkid, this is an adult who did all this and took money for this "art".

So sick of it already oh my

[ahmwma]

There are a lot of fake Wigglypaint sites and apps and a lot of them have stolen art in their galleries!

The program is originally from itch.io. The owners of these fake sites stole work from the artists who posted their wigglypaint drawings on itch.io so they could have something in their community galleries to lure people into thinking they were legit.

I've been talking to artists whose work was stolen here on tumblr and on instagram and everywhere else and absolutely no one whose art was taken from itch ever gave permission for their art to be used by any of these fake sites.

Wigglypaint.com: Art theft. Jigglypaint app / Jigglypaint.com: Art theft. Wiggly-paint.com: Art theft. Wigglypaint.run: Art theft. Wigglypaint.fun: Art theft. Wigglypaint.online: Art theft.

And so on.

Even Wigglypaint.net, which doesn't steal art directly, uses AI-generated images to advertise their subscription plan ($49usd/year) while blocking comments that mention the username of the original creator of Wigglypaint in the social area.

All these sites are trying to get artist's money for a free art program.

Wigglypaint is always free on itch.io from the original creator, or you can use free 16-color modded versions like WigglyPaintPlus. (Or mod the program yourself! You don't even need to know how to code.)

But please, please don't give money to art thieves, AI bros and scammers.

The writeup about all of these sites can be found here.

If you think you might be an affected artist you can search for your itch.io display name in this spreadsheet. It may load slowly, there are more than 2000 instances of art theft in there.