Reddit User Scrapes 12 Million Images from Anti-AI Photo App Cara

Cara, an image-focused social media app created by photographer Jingna Zhang in 2023 as a refuge for artists concerned about AI scraping, has had its entire content scraped by a Reddit user. The user, u/MandarinDawnPoppy994, posted on the r/DefendingAIArt subreddit, boasting that they scraped over 12 million works, totaling over 12 terabytes of data, for under $10, calling it a 'fun project.' The post has since been deleted. Zhang announced the incident on Instagram, expressing frustration that despite implementing anti-bot measures, setting robots.txt to block AI scraping, and opting out of federated services, artists still cannot find safety. She noted that laws and governments have not provided adequate protection. The scraped data is unlikely to be used for training a base AI model, as billions of images with text captions are typically required, suggesting the act was targeted at Cara specifically because it is an anti-AI platform. Zhang has previously joined class-action lawsuits against tech firms, including Google, over AI scraping. The incident highlights the ongoing tension between AI developers and artists seeking to protect their work.