Instagram Exodus Has Hundreds Of Thousands Rushing To New Anti-AI Rival
Illustration 254565364 © Btseries | Dreamstime.com
Feeling like your Instagram feed is becoming a battleground between artists and artificial intelligence? You’re not alone. Disgruntled creators are migrating to Cara, a social media platform making waves with its focus on human-made art and its stance against AI-generated content, following revelations about Meta training its models on their work on Instagram without permission.
Launched by photographer Jingna Zhang and her team, Cara’s user base has ballooned from a mere few thousand to over 300,000 in a matter of days, Colossal reports. This is thanks in large to a popular Instagram Story trend where artists have announced their transition to the human-first portfolio app.
The surge has landed the relative newcomer, which debuted early last year, a coveted spot in the Top 5 of Apple’s US App Store, suggesting a strong desire among artists for an AI-free zone.
Hi everyone, sorry for the absence—we hit 300k users on Cara!!!!!! 🥹🤯🥳
— Jingna Zhang @ cara.app/zemotion (@zemotion) June 3, 2024
We made it to top 5 in App Store for social networks in the US—passing Twitter, Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Messenger! Unfortunately this traffic spike has caused the site to crash like crazy &— 1/ pic.twitter.com/xsgB9pewwf
But Cara isn’t just a showcase platform. It actively combats the threat of AI-generated art with Glaze, a tool developed by the University of Chicago’s SAND Lab. Glaze disrupts style mimicry, preventing AI models from replicating artistic styles and potentially infringing on copyrights. This two-pronged approach—providing a safe space for original work and actively fighting AI appropriation—is resonating with artists of all stripes.
Goodbye Instagram, hello Cara! Let’s see how this goes. pic.twitter.com/vnmPlAVZCQ
— Daniel Warren Johnson (@danielwarrenart) June 3, 2024
When i thought Instagram was the safest place now is going to use posts to train AI idk where is safer anymore. i will start using less Instagram after this update
— Princesa Moody 👑🇵🇷🩷 Commission Open (@peachmarie_draw) May 31, 2024
i just created a Cara account to post art if anyone wants to join me there I will appreciate it pic.twitter.com/6PR9PWB3Zp
While the influx of users has presented some growing pains (the team has upgraded servers seven times!), Cara is perceived as a thriving hub for artists working in various mediums, from digital character design to traditional illustration, with a mission to empower creatives and advocating for their rights in the face of a rapidly evolving, uncomfortable technological landscape.
As Zhang and her team aptly state, “If platforms don’t support their users, then we will create a platform that does.”
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