It’s not that I prefer having images occluded by anything, signatures, text boxes, or whatever… But when it comes to online protections for someone’s work, hell yeah put that shit on there.

The best part is that I’ve been saying this well before generative AI was mainstream. Artists who put their work on public domains who don’t want it getting into the hands of others shouldn’t have an issue with signing the hell out of the image. They can of course add it before uploading and not to the original.

Would it be amazing if people properly lisenced others work and/or requested permission to use it? Absolutely. That’s just not the world we live in.

I’ve said it many times, but the channels I speak through are small, so from the top!

If you put your artwork online in any public location, make sure your signature or even a QR code is obnoxiously large and centered on the image. Humans can still see and enjoy what you’ve made, AI won’t be able to discern anything, and if it happens to get ripped by one of those Chinese T-shirt bots, at least anyone who buys will know who the original artist is.

A few (it feels like 3+) years ago it was attributed to 4chan and something politically extremist by some journalists. I don’t remember what the article was about, so I went and found one.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-pepe-the-frog-hate-symbol-20161011-snap-htmlstory.html

Edited in a better one.