Cara Is Shiny and New, but Is It the Holy Grail of Art Communities?
Recently, Meta announced a significant change to its privacy policy. Because we all signed the terms of service years ago without reading them first, the company can now use any images we’ve uploaded to train its AI tools, which will soon bring AI art directly to the platforms.
On the other side of this equation is Cara, the hot, new social media app for visual artists and designers, making the lofty claim that AI imagery is not allowed on the platform (we’ll see), and everyone is racing over there to protect themselves from the robot overlords.
However, they’re not protected because they didn’t delete their Instagram or Facebook accounts. Instead, they left the accounts with the doors and windows open so Meta could rummage through their posts in their absence.
And that’s not even the biggest problem with Cara and the artists jumping over there. After doing a bit of a dive into the app for research purposes, I found some areas that may be problematic.
My first thought was that this app was a more social, less sophisticated version of ArtStation, which is ok, but Cara doesn’t have anything distinguishing itself as new or different.
The Cara community is thriving with animators, 3D modelers, and illustrators focused on video games and cartoons, but a lot of bad work is being shared. You can stand out with exceptional work, but if a sea of mediocre art surrounds you, will that detract viewers?
There is a jobs board, but all the work is for illustrators, game designers, web devs, and coders. Although the situation may change, the job board isn’t meant for anyone outside those areas.
The community is tight if you’re in one of those genres above, but fine artists, photographers, and makers are lonely islands drifting through the murk, trying to find others like them.
The customers are not there yet, and there’s no telling when they will show up. Because of the current presentation, it may be unappealing to anyone who isn’t into illustrated work. I don’t see regular art lovers downloading and using Cara just to see your work.
Because this is a small start-up and it has had a significant influx of users, its hosting expenses grew at an exponential rate. I’ve heard from others that the app is buggy due to the lack of technical infrastructure needed to operate at this new level. It will soon need huge amounts of money to beef up its tech and maintain its hosting capabilities.
They have a “Buy Cara a Coffee” button in their navigation bar, which tells me they are being funded by users. That's cool if it’s working, but it’s not a great business plan, and if that’s the only way it’s being funded right now, the app will fail.
That last one will require investors, who expect the start-up to have a revenue plan soon. That means Cara will undergo significant changes in the future, including algorithm changes, and may put everyone back in the same boat of obscurity.
Overall, there’s nothing mindblowing about Cara, in my opinion. Though it may offer a safe haven away from AI scrapers (maybe… hackers gonna hack), if you’re trying to run a creative business, you won’t find a lot of customers there.
The only way Cara becomes popular with non-artist humans is if they can use it too, and the app doesn’t seem like it wants to become an app for normies to post pictures of their food.
This is one man’s opinion, though. Test Cara out for yourself and see if it’s a place you feel comfortable using regularly. Just make sure you make every effort possible to pull viewers away from
