“Nightshade’s goal is not to break models, but to increase the cost of training on unlicensed data, such that licensing images from their creators becomes a viable alternative.”
Opt-out lists are unverifiable, and AI scrapers ignore them with zero consequences. Nightshade poisons images so a model trained on enough shaded cows learns that cows have leather handles and zipper pockets. The poison survives cropping, compression and screenshots. Artists can’t sue every scraper, so they’re making the stolen data cost something.