116: Save Yourself!

Cara, Adobe, Meta and a week full of fear and anxiety

Today’s Drawing Prompt & Cover Art is…

“SAVE YOURSELF”

CARA, META, ADOBE… it’s ALL the rage outrage this week.
Some important updates and thoughts in this week 116 of the Draw or Die Newsletter for Visual Storytellers… let’s go!

I’ve been asked to review CARA, the new social media app which promises to be a better place for artists online… and the move from ADOBE to pretty much steal our art while we pay for the pleasure.

TLDR:
ADOBE Terms of Service changes., they’ve clarified what it means here, and of course it’s all a bit overblown. I’m assuming Kyle T. Webster (master of digital brushes) resigned from Adobe over some of the recent ToS changes. His dislike of GenAI is no secret.

CARA: A million artists have left Instagram for the new app which promised it will be a better place for artists. No AI, no scraping, etc… but can you really trust it???

META’s JUNE 26th AI DOOMSDAY FOR ARTISTS:
Our EU Artist friends can totally opt out of META’s upcoming AI scraping of all your FB and Insta content. - BUT there is no way for USA users to opt out. Why? EU has GDRP rules… USA does not. To this point, the only way to not be scraped, so they say, is to set all your accounts to PRIVATE.
Here’s more info about the opt-out from CNET.

Of course, these are all related to the fact that Humans, Artists, don’t really want AI to scrape their content… but honestly it’s probably a bit too late. That hour has passed. They’re only letting you KNOW now. And knowing is half the battle.

Our First Mistake

The first mistake we make as Artists, or consumers really, is truly trusting ANY of these brands. Why would you ever think or believe they have your best interest at heart?

Because they told you so? Or maybe you KNOW people at the company? They’re authentic! They’d never screw over the customers!

With companies, brands, corporations… it’s always going to go back to them wanting to take your money or your time/attention. Nothing is truly free. You should know that if you don’t already.

CARA: A new hope HYPE.

"I believe if major companies won't take a stand to protect us, then we should build a home for ourselves." - Jingna Zhang, founder or CARA, freelance artist/photographer

The good: It’s always exciting on the surface to hear about an app that promises “NO AI” or it will be so fair to artists… we’ve heard this all before it seems from other apps. But it’s always nice to see artists rallying together and supporting each other. And I do believe the founder means well.

The Bad: Artists are already complaining about CARA, that it’s too slow, missing features, blah blah blah… The reality is, it’s NEW. And too early to tell.

Also bad… it’s essentially an echo-chamber of artists. Those who are looking for community? It’s going to be the same types of cliques you see, or pressure, or people wearing a lot of masks and not being REALLY REAL. It’s already happening. If you seek to build a presence to make money with your art, then you probably will not build that on CARA. You have to remember that you don’t want your primary audience of your work to be OTHER artists.

The Ugly: In this article on Entrepreneur, Zhang states what such a small team they are. Barely any resources. With the influx of users, there will come the need for resources, AND MONEY. And that will come from investors and offers surely, and you might see some of their promises FLIP pretty fast. I expect them to have a “premium” feature pretty fast to try to bring in the money… and they’re going to need it when META lawyers come knocking.

Th big problem that’s coming for CARA is they basically “cloned” META.
Which is most likely going to land them in court sooner rather than later. They will NOT have the money to defend or stop that.

Because a million people leaving your platform DOES mean money and less attention. Saying that a million people have left Instagram for Cara… it’s bullshit.

It’s a made up story to get you to want to move there. Classic marketing. We still see the SAME artists on both platforms.

The truth is, Artists are still dipping their toes in.
Testing the waters. And that’s how it should always be.
TRUST but VERIFY.

Want to go get REALLY deep? Ask questions like:
Why won’t CARA release their source code? Who are the ACTUAL developers?
Do you really think a random photographer/freelance artist decided to just hobble together a new platform on their own with the help of a few friends? I’m skeptical.

The terms of service at CARA are already pretty GREY. Nothing is FOREVER. From their ABOUT PAGE:

We do not agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form, and we won’t host AI-generated portfolios unless the rampant ethical and data privacy issues around datasets are resolved via regulation.

In the event that legislation is passed to clearly protect artists, we believe that AI-generated content should always be clearly labeled, because the public should always be able to search for human-made art and media easily.

So basically they’re saying, “NO AI for now!”

When they pull the old “switcheroo”, there will be outrage again. Bet on it.

My take

I’ve always tried new things. So you can find and follow me on CARA at https://cara.app/djcoffman. I’m not sure how much time I’ll spend there, mainly because I’m busy and I don’t need another social media app, BUT I also don’t believe that it serves me or my art to leave platforms where the major attention is.

Be careful. Test. Learn.
Remember, It’s not for everyone just because everyone is doing it.
Do what’s best for you.
Don’t try to force your friends or neighbors to comply. That always feels a bit fascist to me. 😂

Truth is….

NOBODY IS COMING TO SAVE YOU!

Spending your time feeling outraged about AI, apps, terms of services, it’s just not good for your own mental health.

There’s also this vibe of “you must pick a side!!!!”
Are you with the robots or with us??!

Or statuses on FB like this one from a friend:
“if you even dare think about using AI let me know now so I can unfriend you!”

Give me a break with this nonsense. I don’t know about any of you, but anytime in life there’s someone telling you that you MUST pick a side, even if you yourself don’t know enough about a topic… it could be anything… COKE vs PEPSI!… this is red flag. Someone is trying to tell you a story. To what end are they trying to influence you? What “call to action” are they seeking you to take.

Do you think CARA really cares about YOU the artist? Or do they really care about how to tell a good story to amass as many users as possible.

WHY ARE WE USING THESE APPS ANYWAYS???

Artists use these apps because they are FREE or Cheap. But nothing is ever “FREE”. This is the deal you make when you signup, you don’t read the Terms of Service on most things you use, or you’d be shocked what you agree to.

Pretty much ALL apps have the tight to use your art, sell their own products with YOUR art in it if you’ve posted on their site. They could really sell a “BEST OF INSTAGRAM” book with a set topic… and not give you a dime or credit you even. It doesn’t really benefit them to do this.

At the core of all of these issues is… FEAR.

Right now it’s the FEAR OR AI. That AI is going to take away your jobs, or rob you of your worth as an artist. You need to start looking at it a different way. And it’s a whole other topic I’ll dive more into NEXT week because it’s too big of a topic for this blurb. I have a lot of thoughts about AI, ARTISTS, and the near future and present.

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