Rich Ackerman
I want to be direct about two tools that, in their current form, provide little to no practical value for working artists: ArtGuard and the image-like notifications.
  1. ArtGuard Is Not Performing the Job It Claims to Do
ArtGuard continues to return similar-looking photographs taken by other photographers — not my actual images. That makes the results meaningless. I can’t file a takedown request on images I didn’t create, nor does seeing unrelated photos help me protect my work.
If ArtGuard isn’t capable of detecting my actual images out on the web, then it isn’t performing its core function. At that point, it’s noise, not protection.
If the tool is meant to do true image matching, then there’s clearly a technical gap.
If it isn’t meant to do that, then ASF should be upfront that ArtGuard is not actually a copyright-monitoring tool in any meaningful sense.
  1. “Someone Liked Your Image” Notifications Offer Zero Actionable Value
The notifications telling me “someone liked your image” are equally ineffective. Without knowing who liked the image, where they viewed it, or what action they took, I cannot engage, follow up, or learn anything. A generic “like” with no identity, no context, and no analytics isn’t useful to any artist trying to build relationships or understand audience behavior.
Right now these notifications disrupt workflow without offering any insight or utility.
If the goal is to help artists measure engagement, then the notifications need:
identification of who liked the image,
where they saw it,
or at minimum, a useful metric or actionable next step.
Without that, it’s hard to understand why these alerts exist at all.