I noticed the same thing as Ben, due to the upcoming AI-training-bootcamp from Meta on everything from images to texts, artists are leaving the silos and set up shop at Cara.

The first thing I did when I opened the app is to find out if it is somehow federated or decentralized. Unfortunately it is not. Not yet maybe? I’d love to fill my timeline with more diverse artists from various sources. There is already Pixelfed, which leans more towards photography and video. Cara is aimed at a broader scope of artforms. All without AI, with which Ben gives a great explanation how federation opens doors to unwanted and undesirable scraping of your content after all. His explanation gave me new insights, for instance

  • Some (Mastodon) servers may themselves be owned by AI vendors and may use federated content to train generative models even without the use of a scraper

I never considered this an option. That’s crazy. It’s smart in some devious way, yet crazy. Ben’s conclusion:

  • Someone needs to legally prevent AI vendors from using all available data as training fodder

That’s why in Europe we have an AI Act to start with. It’s not perfect, it’s not done, but it’s something.

PS: Yes, I tried the app and made a profile. One cannot have too many profiles…