Anti-AI Art Portfolio Platform Cara Reaches 300,000 Users

The platform's userbase sextupled over the weekend.

Jingna Zhang, a professional Photographer and Founder of Cara, an ArtStation-esque portfolio and social platform for Digital Artists, announced that the platform has officially surpassed the 300,000 users milestone, with its userbase sextupling over the weekend.

Launched back in early 2023, shortly after massive protests against AI-generated images that took place on ArtStation, Cara is known throughout the community for its staunch artist-first, anti-AI position, strictly prohibiting AI-generated portfolios and not allowing artificial intelligence developers to scrape user portfolios for training purposes.

In December last year, Cara also collaborated with Glaze, enabling artists to use the technology directly on the platform to protect their works from style mimicry by generative AI models. New posts on Cara automatically have Glaze applied, including to multiple images, with users being able to tweak and adjust the intensity of the glazing for enhanced protection.

A year and a half after its launch, Cara has now reached the 300K users mark, with the development team celebrating the occasion by rolling out a series of urgent fixes and server upgrades designed to accommodate the unexpected surge of traffic and fix the sign-up/log-in issues and crashes that arose due to the platform being unprepared for such a large influx of users.

"We made it to the top 5 in App Store for social networks in the US – passing Twitter, Discord, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Messenger! Unfortunately, this traffic spike has caused the site to crash like crazy, our small team has been working around the clock to fix the issue, but if you have been having a hard time signing up or accessing the platform, this is why," commented Jingna. "We hope Cara can be a great home for everyone who loves art online one day, and we're grateful to have a community of 300K with us on this journey. We still have a long way to go, so thank you for joining us despite the hiccups and potential issues along the way. Thank you for your patience and support."

You can join Cara here and support the app's development over here. Don't forget to join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Reddit, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

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Comments 6

Anonymous user
I work with AI quite a bit. I think real artists have every right to protect their work. I don't want to infringe on someone's rights just to enjoy myself. That would be cruel. It's not gatekeeping, it's the artists right to maintain their IP. I'm in support of ethical AI sourced from consenting artists.
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Anonymous user
·6 months ago·
Anonymous user
Cara is not anti-AI though. Read what they have to say about it. They are anti-current-state-of-unethical-generative-AI. From what I can tell, they are supportive of the nebulous idea of using AI tools in the art creation process. And their wording seems to indicate they would support generative AI if it becomes “ethical.” Forgive me if I’m wrong, there’s some reading between the lines that must be done with Cara.

So… where’s the art community that is actually against AI?

That being said, if Cara helps bleed users from the big sites, I’m still all for it.
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Anonymous user
·6 months ago·
Anonymous user
It is definetely not a google search, a google search does not create new data. A google image search is a google image search.

To people complaining about this as 'gatekeeping' artists have every right to 'gatekeep' their expression, job and way of life. AI art is 'art' as much as collage is art, or a painting based off photography, you still have to give credit where its due (that's why copyright law exists), and that's near impossible with current AI generation. AI isn't evil, its a tool but the economic and legal framework around it at the moment has a lot of work to be done before it can be used effectively. The way it currently works isn't really good for anyone, the user, the art it learns from, the economy etc. Artists have every right to move their work to a space they feel represents what they do. Much like every other profession. Anyone complaining about it surely has better things to do.
Not even the AI creators or users want artists to all shut down due to lack of work/funds, AI art can only created from what has been fed to it, the mix of things can create things that appear new, but the mix of real world art would surely be vital to art's future as well. Human expression still needs tools outside of what AI can provide.
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Anonymous user
·6 months ago·
Anonymous user
Not against AI artist. It's against how AI models are developed. It's a product that exists on unpaid uncredited stolen work. You know shoot if the person who wrote that first comment is really generous about donating their assets I'll take some money. Stop gatekeeping it, currency is always developing.
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Anonymous user
·6 months ago·
Anonymous user
This is good. AI generation isn't art it's essentially a Google search. It's not GaTeKeEpInG, it's not wanting your work stolen. IDIOT.
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Anonymous user
·6 months ago·
Anonymous user
Gatekeepers. Art is always evolving, making a website dedicated to people who are against AI artist is gatekeeping. No one complains about readymade art or calculators, but AI art is a problem…
-3
Anonymous user
·6 months ago·

Anti-AI Art Portfolio Platform Cara Reaches 300,000 Users

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