Much of the fun of internet drama comes from its frivolousness, but sometimes an online shitfest points to something bigger. Last week, the AI-powered furry art site thisfursonadoesnotexist did just that, igniting a fandom firestorm while also highlighting an important debate about digital art. Trained on more than 55,000 images pulled (without permission) from a furry art forum, the algorithm was a simple case of art theft to some. For others, it was a chance to break out the popcorn. But legal scholars who spoke with Gizmodo said the conflict raises thorny questions about ownership in the age of AI—questions that may ultimately have to be answered in court.
Arfa, the programmer behind thisfursonadoesnotexist, says he used the same GAN (generative adversarial network) architecture behind the site thispersondoesnotexist to generate around 186,000 furry portraits. When he posted the project on Twitter last Wednesday, dozens of commenters rushed to weigh in. While many were fascinated by the project, some in the furry community objected to Arfa’s unauthorized use of art from the furry forum e621.net as training data. At least one person tried (and failed) to find proof that the algorithm was copying images from e621.net outright. And within days, the entire site was slapped with a DMCA copyright infringement complaint. (The company whose name the DMCA was issued in, according to Arfa, denied filing the notice and requested it be withdrawn.)
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The creator of thisfursonadoesnotexist thinks it would’ve been impossible to contact all the artists involved. Arfa told Gizmodo that he scraped 200,000 images that were then narrowed down to a 55,000-image training set representing approximately 10,000 different artists—creators who may go by different names now or have left the fandom entirely. According to Arfa, he’s more than willing to take an image down from thisfursonadoesnotexist if it clearly copies an original character, but he says he has yet to see credible evidence of that.
In defense of the AI’s originality, the site has produced a collection of mushier fursonas whose delirious weirdness inspired a flurry of memes. “Some of these have designs that are so… specific? Holistic?” a commenter on Hacker News wrote, linking to a fursona with a tail sticking out of her head and an adorably half-formed feline mouse. Do these Cronenberg-esque misfit furries, with their wild-eyed gazes, scream “LOVE ME”or “SAVE ME”? The art world adores liminality—that’s value added right there.
Image: Thisfursonadoesnotexist
Furry artists aren’t alone in facing the dilemma of digital manipulation. Just last month, Jay Z filed DMCA takedown notices against a YouTuber who used speech synthesis software to make his voice read the Book of Genesis and cover Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” While experts explained to Gizmodo that Jay Z’s issue isn’t copyright, since copyright doesn’t cover speech patterns, both incidents suggest a future where machine learning art is widespread, even commonplace. In such a future, can an artist’s original work be used as training material? If so, to what end? (In Jay Z’s case, YouTube ultimately allowed the videos to stand.)
an announcement from Samsung and Korean provider SK Telecom that the world’s first 5G smartphone complete with a quantum random number generator (QRNG) is due to launch next week.
The Galaxy A Quantum, however, turns the security dial up to 11.
Although it’s a Galaxy A71 5G at heart, the rebranded and updated smartphone comes complete with one important security extra: a QRNG chip developed by ID Quantique.
When random just is not random enough
Random number generators are a vital part of many security solutions, but they often aren’t as random as you might expect. Indeed, “pseudo-random” number generators are not uncommon, but these are a weak spot cryptographically and, as such, are something of a honeypot for hackers. What the ID Quantique QRNG brings to the security party is not only a genuinely random number generator but one able to generate perfectly unpredictable randomness.
The QRNG chip found in the Samsung Galaxy A Quantum is provably random, has full entropy from the first bit, and has been both designed and manufactured specifically for mobile handsets.
The quantum randomness is achieved by way of “shot noise” from a light source captured by a CMOS image sensor. A light-emitting diode (LED) and an image sensor are contained within the chip, and that LED emits a random number of photons thanks to something called quantum noise, ID Quantique explains. Those photons are then captured and counted by the image sensor pixels and provide a series of random numbers fed into a random bit generator algorithm.
The algorithm further distills the “entropy of quantum origin” to create the perfectly unpredictable random bits. If any failure is detected during the physical process, the stream is disabled and an automatic recovery procedure starts another.
With uses such as two-factor authentication, biometric authentication for mobile payments, and blockchain-based document storage wallets, the QRNG will be put to good use.
A new chapter in quantum security history
Grégoire Ribordy, co-founder and CEO of ID Quantique, said, “With its compact size and low power consumption, our latest Quantis QRNG chip can be embedded in any smartphone, to ensure trusted authentication and encryption of sensitive information. It will bring a new level of security to the mobile phone industry. This is truly the first mass-market application of quantum technologies.” Ryu Young-sang, vice-president at SK Telecom, said the Galaxy A Quantum is a “new chapter in the history of the quantum security industry.”
