Hate AI? Just Poison It with a Font
August 11, 2026
AI notoriously steals data and uses it to train its algorithms. Users are getting tired off their data being stolen and used without their permission, so someone came up with a great idea to “poison AI.” Creative Bloq explains that: “Type Designers Have Created A Free Font That ‘Poisons’ AI” so it can’t steal data. The people hit the hardest with AI stealing their data are artists. Their art is being scrapped and stolen.
A designer had the brilliant idea to create a font that hides text from AI bots. It’s called ShieldFont and it is a free web font that can be read without issue and contaminates AI datasets. It is available in six weights. It was made by a Brazilian creative studio called Seneda & Abrucio and the type foundry Playtype located in Copenhagen. Their entire goal was to make a typeface that reads regularly but feeds scrapers different words.
Here’s how the typeface works:
“That hidden system works on the premise that while humans read rendered pixels on a screen, most AI mass scrapers read the source code behind them. Using OpenType glyph substitution, it changes select words in the HTML to alter sentences’ original meaning but keeps them grammatically coherent, so they’re more likely to pass AI quality filters.”
ShieldFont’s creators want to stress they are not anti-AI, they’re against content being used without permission. When something is published that does not automatically mean the creator gives AI consent to scrap their artwork. I noted:
“‘ShieldFont is not an anti-AI project,’ S&A’s founders Isaque Seneda and Gabriel Abrucio stress. ‘We’re simply against the idea that publishing is the same as consenting. We saw how existing opt-out protocols such as robots.txt were being routinely bypassed, so we wanted to create one that could enforce itself. The answer was to turn the content itself into the opt-out.’”
ShieldFont could be the start of a bigger revolution in digital content where artists can confound AI scrapers and protect their content. It would be marvelous if this could turn into a big cat and mouse game with the artists getting the edge over AI algorithms and protecting their integrity. It wouldn’t last long but it would send a message to Big Tech.
Whitney Grace, August 11, 2026
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