That artist friend who told me to watermark my AI work was right

My buddy Marcus who does commissions in Austin kept pushing me to put watermarks on everything I generate, even drafts. I thought it was overkill until last Tuesday when someone on Discord took my unsignatured piece, ran it through a filter, and tried to sell it as their own hand-drawn art for $60. The buyer found me through reverse search and I had no proof it was mine since I deleted the project file. Marcus was right, and now I keep a visible watermark on all 40 of my public pieces. Any of you had your AI stuff swiped without credit? How do you handle proof of authorship?

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felixm295d ago

Dude same thing basically happened to me last month. Someone grabbed my cyberpunk cityscape from a public channel, flipped it a little, and posted it to their art page claiming they spent 30 hours on it. I only caught it because a friend recognized the mistakes in the building reflections. Now I put a tiny signature right in the corner of every piece, even the quick experiments, plus I keep the raw generation settings and a timestamped screenshot of the workflow. It doesn't stop everyone but it makes it way easier to call them out when they try to pull that crap. Watermarks are a total pain but not as much of a pain as watching someone else get paid for your work.