Can you read the text above? Because large language models can’t.
The design and tech company Mixfont has created Decoy Font, which promises to hide your text from AI crawlers. As covered in Dezeen, the font works by using two layers for each letter, a clear outline and then a darker, blurred shape underneath. Humans are able to parse both layers—try squinting or stepping back— but AIs can’t. (This is Mixfont’s second experiment with AI-proofing text. Their first was Ghost Font, a sort of nausea inducing font that hides by moving.)
“Most AI systems work by reading the pixels of an image up close,” according to Mixfont, “So when this type of image is pasted into an AI model…the LLM focuses on the foreground text because that is what is most clearly outlined.” It’s a clever, lo-fi way to break AI models’ ability to process your writing.
I like this experiment, both as a design object and as a creative way to resist AI. Plus I love camouflage (sorry to my friends who have heard a lot about dazzle ships) and I hate AI. Unfortunately, Mixfont is hardly a fellow militant in the anti-AI resistance. The company describes itself as “an AI-powered digital font foundry,” and most of their tools let users AI generate synthetic fonts (based on other people’s design work, presumably).
