A bit of a TLDR for some questions I saw in the notes:
The team that created Glaze is from the University of Chicago. Their names are each listed in full on the Glaze download website. (This group of students/professors did this for their SPRING BREAK 😱 so go give them some love lol)
It is free to download. No, they won’t ask for or raise money from/for this project.(stated by one of the lead professors of the project).
Glaze is designed to protect artists’ STYLE–which a bunch of ai people have been deliberately fine-tuning their models to mimic (and specifically of current living artists–small or big).
It currently does not protect against composition/trace-like theft (as seen when run through img-to-img) but that would be protected by copyright anyway while STYLE is not.
The University Team has stated that they are dedicated to continuing to improve the tool, like fixing bugs (like overheating older computers by taking up lots of energy when Glazing–it currently runs on CPU so they’re trying to change that to GPU, I believe) and expanding the type of protection given to artists (like working against img-to-img theft).
It currently only works directly on your computer (phones not advised due to current overheating issue, no tablets, or iPads, and no website runthrough since that would be insecure to breaches/scraping/hacks)
It currently works best onpainterly artwork, but can still be used on other forms (team is working on improving this)
IT WORKS BY calculating the changes each image needs for the best protection against style theft by AI, and adds tiny changes throughout the piece, so that your style will, for example, confuse the ai into seeing van gogh. But the ai thieves will see a regular image in your style, feeding it into their model labeled as your work (thus starting the “data poisoning”).
Do not post the original unGlazed piece of your artwork after posting your Glazed version (obviously)
The Team worked directly with over 1,000 artists that were being impacted by the ai theft. Because the team listened to those artists, Glaze accounts for regular art thieves too (i.e. Glaze can’t be removed/cropped etc. like signatures or watermarks when reposted. It’s just part of the image, so even if it ends up on another site and scraped, the Glazing is still in effect)
When you run your artwork through Glaze, no information is sent back to the Team. (Aka, no scraping on their part. The app receives information from the Team (like updates) but no information from you is given to them through the app. Basically Team servers —> You and NOT Team servers <-–>You) One-way data street.
Brief misunderstanding happened over an open-source license for the front-end part of the app. (Used open-source coding for front-end, not knowing that code’s use-license states it is only for other open-source uses, not closed-source (the back-end code of the app is private to prevent counter-counter measure developments)). The Team took down the app until they replacedthe front-endcode with code written from scratch by the team. They are now not in violation of that open-source license since they are no longer using it. (you have 30 days to remedy a license breach once informed; they did so in 2)
The Team is currently in touch with Japanese artists to better expand the tool for use to protect their art styles
From what I understand of it, Glaze is an AI tool designed to be anti-AI (Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: one Terminator robot vs. all the other Terminators 😂)
You can download it from their website and also contact them through email there with any questions, problems, or bugs. The website: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/
reblogging this every fucking time it comes across my dash
How do you think Mel would react to learning of jinx past and all the trauma she'd suffered. Actually worse is her managing to put the pieces together and learn it was jinx who blew up Jayce's lab by accident and she and the council helped get her family killed via the pressure they put on vander.
It’s interesting when put that way, because it was the Council’s need for a pound of flesh that pushed Jinx’s family into such dire straits and kickstarted Mel’s own ‘death arc.’ Then again, the Council is responsible for collectively traumatizing the Undercity, and Jinx’s family is far from the only casualty.
At best, if Mel knew the truth, she’d fully grasp that she created a monster by allowing Jayce to develop Hex-tech. But since that was before she greenlit the Hex-tech project and put Piltover on the map, she’d just as easily rationalize it as raw power in the hands of a misguided child, and the need for better safeguards.
Mel’s character is merciful and has good intentions. But she’s also not above engineering situations that benefit her, and solely her, and tends to justify her use of other people by focusing on the long-term gains.
By the time she confronts the consequences of her choices, she does an admirable about-face. But an about-face doesn’t negate the consequences themselves.
Small wonder that symbolically, Silco’s We’ll show them all echoes in Jinx’s head as she aims at the Council, and Mel stands at the dead center of the missile’s trajectory - as the root of the trouble, and its first would-be casualty.
(Assuming FnF setting) Does Sevika ever administer Silco's eye medication for him? If not, how does she feel about him trusting Jinx with the matter, but not her?
In FnF, Sevika is rock solid in a crisis, has a stomach of steel and a mind as cool as a ice.
But she cannot - CANNOT - swallow her gorge where family is concerned. We’ll see this in FnF, with Nandi, and the way her death (and the manner of it) leaves Sevika absolutely wrecked. Then again, with her father, and how he turns her irrational and wounded on a dime.
Ditto for Silco.
She has a distinct revulsion for his eye - moreso because she remembers his face before the accident, and the difference is jarring. Like watching someone you’ve known since childhood literally decay before your eyes.
Silco mocks her about being afraid of rot. But he also deliberately doesn’t kiss her for this same reason. She’s drawn a boundary re: what triggers her, and he tries not to cross that line (one of the few boundaries he doesn’t cross, given how insidious he is in every other respect.)
So: no.
She doesn’t administer his eye meds, and has no tolerance for the delicate process. Silco, on his part, wouldn’t allow it, either. He trusts Sevika with day-to-day minutiae re: his empire. But he draws the line at more intimate stuff. This is, after all, the same woman who punked him by pretending to side with Finn, to send the message that she was upset with his performance as a kingpin.
In a rl context, if they were married, and he got sick, she’d be the spouse who takes responsibility for their shared business, and hires a nurse/attendant to look after him, because she lacks both the time and the emotional capacity to be in a nurturing role.
(Caretaking is a tough job, and requires a certain resilience that not everybody possesses, even if they’re hypercompetent in other spheres.)
Contrast with Jinx, who Silco literally views as an extension of himself - and trusts in all intimate contexts, from unloading his boyhood baggage to his Zaun troubles to showing her the place he’d once drowned. Her tantrums, in his mind, are no different from his own mood-swings, and never without cause (never once does he admonish her when she stabs his face in the series, and instead chooses to address the reason she’s upset with him).
With that in mind, trusting Jinx to give him life-saving meds is no different from trusting himself. (Also, a Jinx-centric chapter in Act V will make clear that Silco’s eye dosage is far from the only thing he trusts Jinx with: she also knows exactly how he takes his tea, fixes him weird little soups when he’s sick, invents gadgets to help with his migraines, and not only knows every drug in his medicine cabinet, but which ones to give to knock him out cold if he’s restless.)
Sevika sees it as part and parcel of his and Jinx’s weird codependent relationship. There might even be a bit of envy - both because Jinx, whatever else, has a talent for extremely delicate tasks, and also because they demonstrate a closeness she never had with her old man.
One under-appreciated breed of fic writer are the ones who hyperfocus on logistics to the exclusion of all canon shortcuts, and thus usually strike upon an awesome way to flesh out the worldbuilding or characters.
Like, I’m not necessarily talking realism here since often it’s still pretty far from realistic, but more like, “someone has to be running spies in this fantasy kingdom, and we’ve seen the whole royal court, so which background character is it? How does that change these three major interactions?” Or “real life historical nobility did in fact have some things to do that were like jobs, how does this human disaster cope with running an estate?” Or “there’s no reason for a sci-fi robot detective to know how to whitewater kayak, where’d she learn?” Or “if this guy is serving the emperor directly he has to be way high up in the space empire servant hierarchy, why is he doing this menial task for someone else? What’s his motive? Does he perhaps have the secret space telepathy?”
Anyway I’m always DELIGHTED to find a fic or writer who asks these questions because the fics themselves are universally bangers.
person who knows how logistical things works has picked up the cannon, hefted it thoughtfully, and put a single chalk mark precisely on the problem.
Forward, but Never Forget/XOXO - Ch: 15 - Bloody Sunday (Part II)
Snippet:
Before Code Blue, Silco is at Drop Street.
Sevika’s place—once hers and Nandi’s. It is situated at the fringes of district called Oldtown: a zone stuck in time.
The architectural curiosities of Zaun are many, from spiraling towers to zigzagging pathways. Their Art Noveau façades, a holdover of the mercantile era, are squalid with factory soot and defaced by decades of neglect. The awnings with antique flower patterns mark establishments that no longer exist. The curlicued iron flagstaffs with seashell-style ideograms are barely legible beneath accretions of rust. The hand-painted murals show idyllic scenes of gardens long forgotten by even the history books.
They symbolize an age of flora and fauna when life was more plentiful than death; when nature had not been poisoned by industry. The Undercity has changed since then, rebuilt itself over and over, pushing further into a sky that remains out of reach.
A testament to hope—or the repetitions of futility.
Few districts capture the paradox as perfectly as Oldtown. It is the earliest immigrant enclave in the Undercity. Split between Ionian and Shuriman settlers who migrated during the first ripples of the Void Wars, nothing in Oldtown ever gets torn down. Instead, centuries-old buildings are the crutches on which a crazy jumble of vaulted Shuriman arches and theatrical Ionian balconies are piled together until they resemble a vertiginous cosmorama. The flickering gaslight lends a surrealism to the central street, an effect enhanced in summertime by the Equinox Bazaar, when a tide of colorful merchandise swells and washes up in the courtyards below.
In daylight, it holds the tacky charm of a carnival. At night, it is a smoky jewel-box.
Sevika’s flat is far from the riot of the main streets: a somber three-story brick building. It occupies a no-fire zone where gangs keep an uneasy peace, and where residents have learned to keep their heads down. Few windows face the streets. Those that do pretend to take no notice of the gleaming black limousine parked in the shadows of the backstreet.
That limousine has been there before.
Summary: Zaun is free—and must grow into its unfamiliar new dimensions. So must Silco and Jinx. A what-if that diverges midway through the events of episode 8. Found family and fluff, politics and power, smut and slice-of-life, villainy and vengeance.
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