Art bots will steal your photos on Twitter and put them on a T-shirt. Here’s how to troll them

Jan 13, 2020

Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Đuđić

Dunja Đuđić

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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If you’re a photographer, it’s very likely that your images will get stolen, and even used on different kinds of products. Twitter user Hannah Douken recently discovered that “art bots” scan Twitter in search of artwork that will be put on T-shirts and sold without the artist’s permission. So, she decided to troll them and turn their own tactics against them in a hilarious and ingenious way.

Hannah posted a tweet reading “hey can y’all do me a favor and quote tweet/reply to this with something along the lines of ‘I want this on a shirt’, thank you.” She attached a photo of handwritten text reading “This site sells STOLEN artwork, do NOT buy from them!” She added that she wanted to see if the bots pick it up and turn it into a shirt. And that was exactly what happened.

She found the “stolen artwork” T-shirt on Red Bubble shortly after she posted the tweet.

And as people kept replying to her tweet, there were more and more results.

https://twitter.com/spacekenby/status/1202123442688086016

From here, more people started trolling the bots:

And then, Twitter user Felix Avenier had another idea. He suggested that people started posting trademarked stuff like Disney images, let the bots pick them up, and then alert Disney.

Say no more, Felix. Other Twitter users decided to test it and posted this weird drawing of Mickey Mouse along with the text:

I don’t know if anyone has notified Disney, but yes, these also became available on T-shirts:

https://twitter.com/somewastelander/status/1202430087561465856

 

https://twitter.com/kalesmash13/status/1202311930590978051

While I find this trolling hilarious and I had fun seeing all the ideas people came up with, let’s get serious for a moment. I think that this is actually quite concerning. According to last year’s report from Copytrack, over 2.5 billion photos are stolen every day, and I’m sure there’s a lot more. It’s also concerning how many websites offer these T-shirts with stolen art.

Thefts like this affect all kinds of artists: photographers, painters, digital artists, and designers. It devalues their work, potentially reduces their income, and I think it’s not even easy to keep track of your photos or artwork that gets stolen this way. So, I sure hope that artists will find ways to put an end to this. And this trolling could be, if nothing else, the first step towards it.

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Dunja Đuđić

Dunja Đuđić

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

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9 responses to “Art bots will steal your photos on Twitter and put them on a T-shirt. Here’s how to troll them”

  1. Johnny Martyr Avatar
    Johnny Martyr

    Glad this issue is getting attention

    Reply
  2. Paul Richardson Avatar
    Paul Richardson

    That’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen ???

    Reply
  3. Dimitrios James Avatar
    Dimitrios James

    “artwork”

    Reply
  4. David Fisher Avatar
    David Fisher

    Public domain once shared digitally, surely

    Reply
  5. Kevin Trudeau Avatar
    Kevin Trudeau

    Interesting that people are looking to trick Disney into suing these leaches into the dirt. Wouldn’t it be nice if Disney instead just stepped up with all their billions of dollars and shredded the thieves proactively in defense of independent artists everywhere?

    Reply
  6. DuDe Avatar
    DuDe

    dear Dunja,

    if you’d checked the facts, you would have seen that the Redbubble link belongs to the original artist – just look at the comments to that tweet

    all the others are stolen, of course and it is still horrible, but let’s be a bit more cautious with this stuff

    Reply
  7. Bernice Avatar
    Bernice

    bots hotlinking to cached images shared on pinterest. Then using them on websites that sell advertising, and/or that offer you to adapt that image to a phone case or other items. Send infringement emails and they ignore you. So I no longer allow any pinning of my images unless Pinterest can sort this out.

    Reply
    1. Sean Davey Avatar
      Sean Davey

      yeah, I don’t use pinterest anymore because of rife image theft.

      Reply
  8. Rathelor Avatar
    Rathelor

    Just aggressively watermark your pictures. Not that hard.

    Reply