FAQs: Yuify – Wacom’s new anti-image-piracy system
Wacom has launched Yuify, a new digital rights management service that it pitches as “an easy-to-use yet powerful tool to protect … digital artwork”.
It enables artists to ‘micro-mark’ images they create and link them to an online record on a blockchain that can be used to establish proof of ownership of the art.
The service is currently in beta, and is available free in the US and parts of Europe.
So how does Yuify work – and will it actually help to prevent piracy, or other unwanted uses of images, such as scraping them to train generative AI models?
We got in touch with Wacom to find out more: below, you can find our FAQs about Yuify.
How does Yuify work?
Wacom describes Yuify as enabling artists “to secure their exports by embedding a unique digital ID with a permanent record of registration”.
The process has two key components: the micro-marking technology and the blockchain record.
Micro-marking uses Wacom’s proprietary technology to inject “invisible pixels” into a photo or artwork exported from a supported image-editing or digital painting app.
As with anti-AI technologies Glaze and Nightshade, the changes are intended to be visually imperceptible, and persist even if the image is manipulated after publishing.
Exporting a micro-marked image also generates a digital certificate with a record of the image’s author and its creation date.
The certificate is then stored on a blockchain, so it’s a permanent online record.
Great, but how does anyone else know that I’ve registered my images?
Wacom has also launched a ‘Yuifinder’: an online lookup tool for registered images.
Anyone dragging an image onto the lookup field on the Yuify website or web app can see its registration details.
Artists can also share registration links directly: for confidential projects, it’s possible to set the image itself not to display when the link is viewed.
Can Yuify do anything other than register images?
Artists can also issue licenses to clients through the Yuify web app, which can be configured for a range of common terms under which the image can be used.
The license agreements are “also recorded [on the blockchain] and can be securely retrieved”.
Are there any restrictions on the art works that Yuify can micro-mark?
Yuify currently only works for 2D images in JPEG or PNG format, exported from a supported image editing or digital painting application.
At the time of writing, that means Escape Motions’ Rebelle, which integrated Yuify in Rebelle 7.2, Celsys’ Clip Studio Paint – according to Wacom, Yuify is supported in the current version – or Photoshop, via Wacom’s own plugin.
Images must be at least 8-bit, and at least 420 x 420px in size. During the beta, images are limited to a maximum size of 12,000 x 12,000px.
Is there anything to prevent someone else registering my images on Yuify?
Users need a Wacom account to use Yuify, but you only need to provide minimal details when registering for one: a name and an email address.
That clearly leaves scope for misuse: for example, for a client to register images for which they haven’t been granted the necessary rights by an artist.
Yuify does check that an image isn’t already registered, and that its metadata matches the software it is being exported from, so there are some basic checks that you aren’t simply registering an image you’ve obtained from another source, but Wacom admits that the current verification system is “not perfect” and is “constantly evolving”.
Why use a blockchain? Isn’t that bad for the environment?
Because it creates a permanent, independently verifiable online record: Wacom says that its objective in using a blockchain is to “ensure records are immutable”.
Although blockchain tech has been criticized for its carbon footprint, Yuify doesn’t use the highly energy-consuming proof of work system used by some cryptocurrencies.
Although creating the initial record still uses electricity, its proof of authority mechanism means that that “no additional energy is consumed” to verify transactions.
The Yuify blockchain is currently being hosted internally by the Wacom-founded Creative Rights Initiative, but Wacom told us that it will move to a public setup and publish technical details after the initial phase of the beta.
How much practical use is registering an image through Yuify?
In its current state, Wacom describes Yuify as a “first step in securing digital rights”, rather than a complete rights-enforcement solution.
Registering an image through Yuify creates a permanent, decentralized record of its creation, which should persist even if an artist loses the original project file.
Other than that, it suffers from the same drawbacks as traditional proofs of ownership, like registering images with the US Copyright Office: that it’s one thing to be able to prove that you created an image, but another to be able to take action if it’s misused.
Yuify’s licensing system acts as a readymade contract generator, and creates an irrefutable record that a contract has been issued.
However, it’s still up to the artist to take legal action if they feel the terms of the license have been broken.
Creative Bloq also reports that Wacom CEO Nobutaka Ide has said that Yuify won’t prevent art being scraped from the web to train generative AI models.
Price, system requirements and availability
Yuify is currently in public beta.
The service is availble free in the US, the European Union, the UK, Norway and Switzerland. It requires a Wacom account to use, but not Wacom hardware.
Yuify-marked images can be exported from Photoshop 25.0+ via the Wacom Yuify plugin, and natively from Rebelle 7.2+ and the current version of Clip Studio Paint.
Read more about Yuify on the service’s website
Read own Wacom’s online FAQs about Yuify
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