Etsy to restrict AI-generated content in effort to combat seller slop

Etsy announced new restrictions Thursday on AI-generated content on its platform, saying it threatens the integrity of its sellers’ work and leaves buyers exposed to fraud.

Among the new stipulations:

• Patterns, recipes, or any other item that involves a buyer “putting in effort to achieve a finished product” cannot be created using AI.
• Sellers must include at least one unaltered photo of the actual item against a real background.
• Bot-generated listings are banned.

AI-generated art can still be sold on the platform as long as merchants “Play a clear role in what they create and are transparent about the process,” Etsy said in a note to sellers.

“Our marketplace only works when buyers and sellers trust each other,” Etsy Vice President of Customer Operations James Ossman wrote in a blog post.

“Sellers need clear guidance and confidence that their creativity and craftsmanship will be represented fairly; buyers need to understand what they’re buying and the human involvement behind it. We know we have work to do to uphold this standard on Etsy.”

Etsy hosts more than 5 million entrepreneurs, most of whom are women who run one-person businesses out of their homes, according to an annual company report.

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That distinguishes it from other major e-commerce platforms like Amazon and eBay, though it commands a fraction of those platforms’ revenues. As of 2024, Etsy hosted $10.9 billion-worth of goods’ sales, compared with about $75 billion for eBay and more than $700 billion for Amazon.

Some buyers responded positively to Etsy’s announcement.

“I can’t explain how infuriating it has been to purchase a crochet pattern, only to open the PDF and realize it’s fully AI-generated, doesn’t make sense, and definitely doesn’t match what the finished product should be,” creator Kara Lynne said on X.

The dawn of advanced AI has led to an explosion in AI-generated sales content — and a growing backlash from consumers against what they see as AI slop.

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A recent social media trend among cafes and restaurants saw owners pledging not to use AI after egregious examples of AI-generated food images in the wild were shared on social media.

Major platforms are responding to the growing discontent. Many, including Facebook and Instagram, now work to append labels to images or videos created via AI.

Others, like LinkedIn, have added buttons allowing users to report AI-generated content.

Snap has banned wholly AI-generated content from its recommendation algorithm, while Spotify recently announced it had removed 50 million AI-generated tracks from its platform.

Ossman said Etsy would add a function similar to LinkedIn’s that makes it easier for users to report listings that include misleading AI imagery.

He also said Etsy would be using technology to identify misleading imagery and fraudulent listings, with the goal of expanding removals of illicit listings in the coming months.

“We’re actively working to address the questions AI raises for our marketplace,” Ossman said in the post.

“This work is hard, and we don’t have every answer today. But I believe this is an important moment for Etsy, and that these initial steps are putting us on the right path.”