It’s Time to Get Rid of Your Pinterest Account

As photographers, each of us has used varied social media platforms to publish our work and gain traction. From X to Flickr, each of us has tried to use these websites to get better reach and exposure and meet potential clients who can purchase our work. Just like that, Pinterest, too, has played a key role for photographers, from uploading their own works to seeking inspiration for shoots. While it was fun to use the platform, a new privacy policy update reveals user data and photographs are no longer safe. That’s because of the use of AI tools.

Per their new clause (via Futurism), Pinterest will use its users’ “information to train, develop and improve” their technology like machine learning models, “regardless of when Pins were posted.” This means that if you had published a photograph back in 2010 when the site was founded, your image would become a part of the data to train its AI model.

However, Pinterest’s goal, it says, is to help “improve products and services” with its AI training models, as well as to “offer new features.” In the past, it has revealed a feature on the platform that allows one to search images by body type. There is also their AI-powered ad suit, which has proven to be successful and has led to more ad spending on their portal. In addition, they are going to build a text-to-image AI model called  Pinterest Canvas, which has been created to enhance “existing images and products on the platform.”

However, if one wants to safeguard their work, they can opt out of the AI training model. Pinterest also will not touch images post by minor users.

This is yet another company to join the AI training bandwagon, after Adoabe, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Google. Whether you like it or not, having any of your images on the web means your photographs, one or another, will be used by tech giants to train their AI models. It’s a rat race, where everyone wants to be the first to reach a milestone, and it doesn’t matter who they walk over in their midst to do so.

Unfortunately, it’s not just training; a quick glance will showcase how AI-generated images are already embedded into the Pinterest feed. This is across varied genres, and the AI slop won’t seem to stop anytime soon as one can earn easy revenue from display ads.

On Reddit’s r/pinterest thread, there were many who were annoyed by this latest move, with one user suggesting: “Instead of turning it off, let it be on, just draw hands daily 5-10 or something else and POISON your PNG or JPG with Nightshade(Glaze). Let them ‘collect your data’ like they want.” Nightshade is a tool that “digitally poisons” AI tools into seeing things that are not a part of the image or the artwork.

However, with this news, we certainly must ask one question: if AI scrapping is now a part of most portals, should you simply go back to showcasing your work the old way? While this may be challenging at the beginning, it certainly is a great option that could reap better benefits.