Your Creative Endeavours Will Be The New Target For Hackers

Since the inception of the internet, one thing has remained consistent. People have always been trying to access places they shouldn't be.

We all know that hackers are becoming increasingly skilled at breaching systems and preying on the vulnerable. For many years, one of their targets has been obtaining people's passwords for accounts, which they can sell on the dark web or ransom back to the owner. While hackers often focus on breaching critical systems or targeting key companies for bigger glory and potentially higher paydays, this is all changing.

Aside from the perceived glory, hackers also want to make money, surprising, I know. But what if there's a new form of valuable data that doesn't require access to people's passwords or personal information and there is no annoying step of having to ransom? The definition of what is valuable on the internet is shifting and we can all thank our friend, AI.

Data for training AI models is now one of the most sought after resources in the race toward... well, whatever the end goal of AI is (we'll save that for another article). The current generation of AI models has already consumed everything freely available on the internet, as well as some data that isn't. But they're hungry for more. AI companies are now turning to other businesses, brokering deals to access proprietary data that isn't publicly available and sometimes without the user's consent.

If you're like me, you're scrutinizing every service you use to ensure they have a clear statement in their privacy policy about what they intend to do with your data in regards to AI. You can't always trust what's in the privacy policy, but I feel maybe slightly better knowing there could be legal ramifications if my data gets sold to an AI company. But even if these companies uphold their legal obligations, which remains to be seen, we still have a major problem, the hackers.

Some hackers will most likely be shifting their focus to companies that hold creative or proprietary data sets. These companies, which may not have been prime targets for breaches in the past, are now at risk. Let's be honest, before LLMs (large language models), what was the value in stealing people's artwork, manuscripts, or other creative mediums? Now, that data is worth its weight in gold.

But what about the legality of AI companies consuming this data for training? That's the most concerning part, we don't know what these models have been trained on, and there’s no legal requirement for this information to be disclosed. This makes it easy for companies to turn a blind eye to the sources of their much needed data.

Perhaps it is time that we all invest in good old fashioned offline hard drives and move our lives away from the cloud. Especially if you are a creative with original ideas you want to hold onto. It's time to seriously consider pulling your work down from cloud storage and maybe even working on a fully offline device. We all know how much we can trust Apple and Microsoft and who's to say they won't be tempted to take your local files?