From attaching value to paper to make currency notes to attaching value to digital art works that sometimes come in the form of jpegs, the world economy has come a long way. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the new currency for the digital users who invest in cryptocurrency. However, along with the NFT boom, it has also been reported that several artworks are being stolen and sold on NFT marketplaces. This has left digital creators in a fix as their one opportunity to earn money from their work has come under threat. Platforms like DeviantArt, an American online art community featuring artwork, videography and photography have now become a place for online burglars to steal the pieces created by artists which they then sell on NFT platforms. To tackle this modern-day robbery, the platform has now taken the help of an Artificial Intelligence (AI). A recent statement by the tech platform mentions that it will now rely on the AI tool to alert the platform management when one of its artists’ artwork is found to be tokenized by a potential fraudster and sold on a major NFT marketplace.
I searched my name to make sure my art hadn't been stolen and turned into NFTs, and sure thing, an obscure old piece from my DeviantArt is randomly on the front page of the marble cards NFT website? How is this allowed… pic.twitter.com/EE1jXLuQDL— Devin Elle Kurtz (@DevinElleKurtz) March 12, 2021
Acknowledging the issue of copyright infringement in the world of digital art, DeviantArt mentioned in a blog post last month that they have introduced “DeviantArt Protect”, their “state-of-the-art” image recognition software. The social network company mentioned that the feature was developed to help safeguard artworks. The DeviantArt Protect is trained to “identify new images that appear nearly visually identical to other images on DeviantArt”, this allows the company to notify the artists when someone uploads potentially infringing art.
In their latest update of the feature, DeviantArt has expanded the scope of their AI tool to identify near matches of minted NFTs submitted across the Internet. The blog post mentioned, “We monitor public blockchain events involving standard NFT tokens types (ERC721 and ERC1155) to identify potential art infringement.”
The scams are not restricted to DeviantArt alone. Renowned digital artist Qing Han, who passed away at the age of 29 in February 2020 had her artwork stolen and sold as NFTs in April 2021. Although her work was posted on Twinci, a different social network platform for artists, it highlights how with the NFT boom the wave of scams and frauds have also arrived.
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