How an AI “artist” stole a woman’s face, with Ali Diamond

Lock and Code

Full-time software engineer and part-time Twitch streamer Ali Diamond is used to seeing herself on screen, probably because she’s the one who turns the camera on.

But when Diamond received a Direct Message (DM) on Twitter earlier this year, she learned that her likeness had been recreated across a sample of AI-generated images, entirely without her consent.

On the AI art sharing platform Civitai, Diamond discovered that a stranger had created an “AI image model” that was fashioned after her. The model was available for download so that, conceivably, other members of the community could generate their own images of Diamond—or, at least, the AI version of her. To show just what the AI model was capable of, its creator shared a few examples of what he’d made: There was AI Diamond standing what looked at a music festival, AI Diamond with her head tilted up and smiling, and AI Diamond wearing, what the real Diamond would later describe, as an “ugly ass ****ing hat.”

AI image generation is seemingly lawless right now.

Popular AI image generators, like Stable Diffusion, Dall-E, and Midjourney, have faced valid criticisms from human artists that these generators are copying their labor to output derivative works, a sort of AI plagiarism. AI image moderation, on the other hand, has posed a problem not only for AI art communities, but for major social media networks, too, as anyone can seemingly create AI-generated images of someone else—without that person’s consent—and distribute those images online. It happened earlier this year when AI-generated, sexually explicit images of Taylor Swift were seen by millions of people on Twitter before the company took those images down.

In that instance, Swift had the support of countless fans who reported each post they found on Twitter that shared the images.

But what happens when someone has to defend themselves against an AI model made of their likeness, without their consent?

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Ali Diamond about finding an AI model of herself, what the creator had to say about making the model, and what the privacy and security implications are for everyday people whose likenesses have been stolen against their will.

For Diamond, the experience was unwelcome and new, as she’d never experimented using AI image generation on herself.

“I’ve never put my face into any of those AI services. As someone who has a love of cybersecurity and an interest in it… you’re collecting faces to do what?”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

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