How AI goods on Etsy are impacting knitters — and crafters at large

Chantal Miyagishima, a Calgary-based knitwear designer, said it takes her anywhere between 60 to 100 hours to knit a single sweater. Months, on top of that, to create a pattern for her creation that works for sizes XS to 5X. 

Now, she says she is going on Etsy to find her patterns, and those of fellow designers, ripped off by other vendors using AI to create a mimicked product.

“It will end me,” Miyagishima said, as she wiped away tears with the cuff of her hand-knit bright pink sweater. 

Etsy, an e-commerce site that fashions itself a “global marketplace” for unique and handmade goods, has long been a destination for small scale crafters to sell to a wider audience. 

But in recent months, some say AI-generated products are stealing their sales and eroding trust in the platform.

Miyagishima, who has been using Etsy for 12 years under the shop name Knitatude, sells digitally downloadable patterns and courses through the site, which guide knitters through a project from start to finish.

In the last six months, Miyagishima said her sales on the platform have dropped by at least 50 per cent. 

“It’s just become overrun with AI patterns to the point that knitters don’t trust the platform to be able to purchase off of there,” she said. 

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That prompted her to hold a poll on her Instagram, asking her followers where they buy their patterns from. Miyagishima said that 70 per cent of the 2,000 people who responded said they will not purchase from Etsy anymore. 

“Those are some big numbers,” she said. 

Etsy did not respond to a request from CBC News for comment by publication time.

Veronica Murphy, owner of STASH knitting boutique in Calgary, said the problem with AI generated patterns is that they are often packaged like the real deal, but turn out to be “absolute nonsense.”

“It’s actually often gibberish and you will never achieve what the picture shows. And you’re kind of set up for failure because their goal wasn’t to give you a quality pattern. Their goal was to literally get you to just purchase it.” 

She said in most cases, it’s beginners being duped who may not know a good pattern from a bad one. 

“AI scammers are creating slop and selling them to our customers online and it’s becoming a real problem. It’s harming our community.”

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It’s not just the knitting world that is affected, but crocheters, sewers, and more. 

Gardeners have been duped into buying seeds for outlandish looking flowers and plants that do not exist after being enticed by AI generated images. Artists have seen their work recreated using AI and sold for a fraction of their original price. 

A quick scroll through the subreddit r/EtsyCommunity shows posts from multiple users discussing declining sales.

On its About page, Etsy says its mission is to “keep human connection at the heart of commerce.” 

The platform allows its vendors to use AI in the creation of both digital and physical goods, provided its use is disclosed somewhere in the listing, and it does not infringe on any other user’s copyright. 

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But Miyagishima says tracking down listings that may have copied her patterns or stolen her photos is time-consuming and not always successful, even if she does issue a notice to Etsy to take the ad down.

“Sometimes they’ll rebuttal it, which means that [you have] 14 days before you legally have to take them to court, which at that point it’s like, it’s a $10 PDF. Is it worth me trying to spend the money for lawyering up to be able to do that? It’s difficult.”

Blair Attard-Frost, whose research focuses on the ethics of AI, says the economic impact of generative AI on artists and crafters is an important issue, but that there are other knock-on effects as well. 

“It’s these sort of more, I guess, intangible issues like the erosion of humanness in the arts and the sort of intrusion of automated systems that some might argue aren’t really engaging the same artistic process that a human creator would,” said Attard-Frost, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta.

Another issue, adds Attard-Frost, is that AI-generated goods can be scaled at a much larger and faster rate than those human made, making the potential for profit much higher. 

“There’s just a lack of authenticity that often comes with this form of art work, right, [starting from] where it’s produced.”