I have never sold anything on Etsy but I’ve certainly purchased things from the site. A few years ago Kara and I wanted to get new wedding bands that reflected our love of games and we found an incredible jeweler on Etsy. I’ve also ordered prints from artists I like and handmade gifts. I always thought of it as a sort of Farmer’s Market or Artist Alley where I could directly support creative people making cool stuff. With their latest announcement that AI shit will now be allowed on the site they have created a space that is actively hostile to the exact sorts of people Etsy was theoretically designed to promote.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time on it because I think the comic pretty much says it all. Besides, I’m pretty sure everyone here knows how I feel about tech companies burning down human creativity so that an overpaid CEO can finally get rid of the irritating need to employ artists. I’ve been in enough meetings with these sorts of predators to understand just how much they resent creative people. The goal of “AI Art” isn’t to make things better for anyone except shareholders.
The people using AI to make stuff and sell it on Etsy are not some new breed of creator. They are cowards. They are people who want to be musicians but don’t want to learn how to play an instrument, they want to be artists but don't want to learn how to draw, they want to be an author but don’t want to learn how to write. I get it! These things are hard to do and they take years of practice but avoiding that step and simply using AI to hijack those years of practice from actual artists isn’t innovative, it’s just evil and all you’ve done is deny yourself the chance to see what YOU are actually capable of.
-Gabe Out
