AI Usage at a Glance
Jan 1, 2022
Creative GenPractice documented: Spawning AI co-founders Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst deployed Holly+, a publicly available AI instrument trained on Herndon's voice that allows anyone to upload audio and generate a version sung in Herndon's voice.
Practice DocumentedView practice →Aug 26, 2022
Creative GenNew evidence: Holly Herndon: How AI can transform your voice
Evidence AddedView practice →Dec 16, 2022
Data AnalysisPractice documented: Spawning AI offers Have I Been Trained (HIBT), a free tool that lets artists search the LAION-5B image dataset to find out whether their work was used to train AI image models, and add those works to the Do Not Train Registry.
Practice DocumentedView practice →Mar 7, 2023
Data AnalysisNew evidence: Spawning opts out 78 million artworks from AI training
Evidence AddedView practice →May 1, 2023
OtherPractice documented: Spawning AI offers ai.txt, a proposed web standard that lets website owners declare machine-readable permissions specifying whether their site's content can be used to train AI models.
Practice DocumentedView practice →May 3, 2023
ProductivityPractice documented: Spawning AI offers the Data Diligence package, an API and open-source Python library that automates the checking of media URLs against opt-out registries so AI developers can filter out creator-restricted content before training their models.
Practice DocumentedView practice →May 3, 2023
Data AnalysisNew evidence: Spawning lays out plans for letting creators opt out of generative AI training
Evidence AddedView practice →May 30, 2023
OtherNew evidence: ai.txt: A new way for websites to set permissions for AI
Evidence AddedView practice →Oct 12, 2023
OtherPractice documented: Spawning AI offers Kudurru, a network-based tool that detects web scrapers collecting images for AI training and allows website owners to block them or send back substitute images.
Practice DocumentedView practice →Nov 3, 2023
OtherNew evidence: Glaze, Kudurru and Nightshade help artists fight back against AI
Evidence AddedView practice →Nov 21, 2023
OtherNew evidence: Spawning on X: Our kudurru beta wordpress plug-in is live!
Evidence AddedView practice →Mar 26, 2024
ProductivityNew evidence: The Spawning Guide to Rights Reservations
Evidence AddedView practice →Apr 5, 2024
ProductivityNew evidence: One Size Does Not Fit All: Machine-Readable Rights Reservations
Evidence AddedView practice →May 1, 2024
Data AnalysisPractice documented: Spawning AI offers Source.Plus, a marketplace that uses classifier models to detect nudity, gore, and personally identifiable information in images, helping AI developers curate consenting, high-quality training datasets.
Practice DocumentedView practice →Jun 11, 2024
Data AnalysisNew evidence: Spawning wants to build more ethical AI training datasets
Evidence AddedView practice →Mar 3, 2026
Creative GenNew evidence: Experimental composer Holly Herndon built an AI voice clone that anyone can use
Evidence AddedView practice →Spawning AI offers the Data Diligence package, an API and open-source Python library that automates the checking of media URLs against opt-out registries so AI developers can filter out creator-restricted content before training their models.
The Data Diligence package allows AI model trainers to automatically check each media item they intend to download against Spawning's Do Not Train Registry and other machine-readable rights reservations (such as HTTP headers and ai.txt). Items registered in the DNTR are not downloaded, and items with other rights reservation signals are excluded from the training dataset. Spawning describes the package as supporting compliance with the EU's text and data mining copyright exceptions and the upcoming AI Act. The package aggregates multiple opt-out standards so developers do not need to manage each registry separately.
Spawning AI offers Source.Plus, a marketplace that uses classifier models to detect nudity, gore, and personally identifiable information in images, helping AI developers curate consenting, high-quality training datasets.
Spawning AI offers Have I Been Trained (HIBT), a free tool that lets artists search the LAION-5B image dataset to find out whether their work was used to train AI image models, and add those works to the Do Not Train Registry.
Spawning AI offers Kudurru, a network-based tool that detects web scrapers collecting images for AI training and allows website owners to block them or send back substitute images.
Spawning AI offers ai.txt, a proposed web standard that lets website owners declare machine-readable permissions specifying whether their site's content can be used to train AI models.
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Spawning AI offers Source.Plus, a marketplace that uses classifier models to detect nudity, gore, and personally identifiable information in images, helping AI developers curate consenting, high-quality training datasets.
Source.Plus is seeded with nearly 40 million public domain and Creative Commons Zero (CC0) images sourced from libraries and museums worldwide. To help developers filter the dataset, Spawning trained classifier models designed to detect nudity, gore, and personally identifiable information within the image collection. The platform also filters out images whose creators have opted out via the Do Not Train Registry. Users can adjust the detection thresholds of these classifiers to flexibly filter the dataset to their needs. Source.Plus launched in limited beta in 2024, with plans to expand to licensed content from rights holders.
Spawning AI offers Kudurru, a network-based tool that detects web scrapers collecting images for AI training and allows website owners to block them or send back substitute images.
Kudurru works by having member websites analyze incoming web traffic to identify and blacklist IP addresses associated with AI data scrapers. Website owners can choose to block detected scrapers outright or optionally serve them alternate images (a technique sometimes called 'data poisoning'), which can corrupt the data a scraper collects. Sites enrolled in Kudurru are also automatically added to Spawning's Do Not Train Registry. As of November 2023, Kudurru was in beta and available as a WordPress plugin blocking over 400 identified scraper bots.
