What is the Artist-focused Anti-AI Social Media App Cara?

Just after Elon Musk took over Twitter, there was a period of time when it seemed like app developers were releasing new social networking platforms on a weekly basis. It was draining. All of us became extremely overloaded, and none of the most recent websites endured with widespread appeal. Are you even familiar with Lemon8 or Artifact?

Fortunately, the deluge of social media platforms has abated. Furthermore, the emergence of new platforms these days is almost—dare I say it—interesting. That's exactly how I feel about Cara, a recently launched social media site that bills itself as "a social media and portfolio platform for artists." It's accessible on desktop and mobile devices.

With an emphasis on artists, it appears to be a hybrid of all the other social networking applications available. You may upload your portfolio on a grid, such as Instagram, and engage in microblogging akin to X. There's a jobs option for artists hoping to get employed, or for those trying to recruit artists, similar to LinkedIn. It seems like likes are public, like X. Also, the Explore page bears some resemblance to the dashboard of Tumblr. However, users may tailor their home feed to how many postings from their network and the wider public they want to view, unlike sites controlled by X and Meta, according to Fast Company.

The largest capture? It's a refuge for artists from AI, which has become a major issue for them on platforms controlled by Meta since Meta trains its generative AI systems on public posts. This is problematic for artists because they worry that these systems would steal or undervalue their work.

It might be infuriating that many social media sites have the feel of problems in need of answers. However, Cara seems to address a specific issue with the impact of generative AI on creators and artists. According to the website, it "filters out generative AI images" to alleviate some of the moral and ethical dilemmas associated with AI policy and to make it simpler for consumers to access creatives and artwork produced by humans.

"Many platforms currently accept AI art when it’s not ethical, while others have promised 'no AI forever' policies without consideration for the scenario where adoption of such technologies may happen at the workplace in the coming years," according to the website.

Cara's position on artificial intelligence is that it will not host work created by AI and does not "agree with generative AI tools in their current unethical form".

"To connect and collaborate, artists and businesses need sophisticated knowledge and assistance in the creative industries of the future. As creatives ourselves, we aim to close the gap and create a platform that we love to use," the website continues.

Cara is still in beta, according to Tech Crunch, but that hasn't prevented it from dominating the App Store charts and attracting 650,000 downloads.