I just thought I’d bring to the community’s attention what Etsy’s stance on AI is. To summarize, they condone the selling of AI generated works which is why they are flooded with poor quality and often unethical AI crochet patterns. I thought many people may not know that Etsy officially allows this, so I just wanted to raise awareness.
https://www.etsy.com/au/seller-handbook/article/1275449912004
AI use should be banned for everything but medical and non artwork uses
I think AI is just so wrong. AI makes it look as if they don’t really need anything made by people anymore.
The main problem is public access to generative AI. Not only is it undermining creative industries, but it’s also creating vast amounts of pollution. With huge numbers of the general public playing with programs like ChatGPT (or companies including AI in their products and services just because it’s “the latest and greatest”), it’s causing a lot of damage to the environment and contributing to global warming (server farms powering the AI programs take a lot of energy and resources to run).
That’s terrible! I use ChatGPT, but only when I need smt for school and I just can’t unserstand why people use AI as something they can sell. If we take it like that, they generate something for free and then start selling it…NO. The selfishness (I hope I spelled that right) of people thinking it’s OK to sell…it just makes me upset :(
Ugh! What floors me is the blantant disregard for actual people who work hard at designing patterns. It’s really not helping the crochet/knit industry at all. I get sent photos all the time on Facebook or get tagged and it’s AI so I had to make a post asking people to use discernment because as a fiber/yarn artist it’s very disheartening to see so many love the photos .
Same! My mom always sends me photos and I always have to say: Mom…this is AI
:( and she looks so upset when she realises :(
Absolutely! Not only do those images set unrealistic expectations on designers but it also feels really deceptive towards consumers purchasing patterns with AI listing photos, since their end result won’t be the same. It takes sales away from legitimate designers, and people just starting to crochet may form poor opinions of the entire industry.
I don’t understand how Etsy can’t see how damaging this is for small creative businesses, especially since they keep claiming that their platform is for HANDmade goods and small artisans. If a program did all of the work and a person only entered a prompt, in my opinion that is not a human made product (especially since the AI would have pieced it together from other peoples pre-existing work).
I just got an AI request the other day, it’s depressing.
Owhhh :(
I never liked etsy in the first place 
