I read their research paper, and it’s very cool! (The link is on their website, but also here’s the paper directly. Click the “download PDF” on the right. I did it and I promise it’s not a virus.) In short, it subtly adds perturbations that mimic a completely different style. It does this in a way which is minimally noticeable to the human eye, but overwhelmingly noted by the AI trying to duplicate the style.
The research paper cites an article about a specific artist who was victim to having her specific style (by her full name) mimicked and trained into a model by a Redditer, who posted it to r/stablediffusion.
I bring this up because I read the Reddit post, and while some people in the comments were pointing out the amorality of copying a specific artist, many of the commenters stuck to the (in my opinion) heinous sentiments of “this isn’t illegal” and “all artists borrow” and “this is progress. the artists are just babies”
This attitude of “AI art generation is just ‘borrowing’ which is exactly the same as what artists do and there’s no ethical dilemma here” scares me more than the existence of the technology, because the sentiment is what will drive its use.