00:02Lucy Cooper has been making and selling crochet items since she was in her late teens.
00:07This year, her design for a beanie took off.
00:11This one granny square stood out to me and I thought, I've never seen anyone put that on a hat.
00:16I was like, you know what, I'm going to do that.
00:18People from like the UK started messaging me and so many different places around the world.
00:24And that's when my video went viral and then my DMs just blew up.
00:30But she says she recently discovered an Etsy store that was selling instructions to make her beanie and pictures of
00:36the finished product that were both generated by artificial intelligence.
00:41It was a lot of work that I feel like was kind of belittled.
00:46Etsy users across the globe are reporting an influx of AI generated products on the online marketplace,
00:53including copied work.
00:55AI is causing tremendous disruptions to online marketplaces
01:00because it's so easy to create a synthetic image that resembles an original work or a real place or a
01:10real thing.
01:11In a statement, Etsy said it allows sellers to use AI as a tool but not to deceive buyers,
01:17misrepresent an item or copy the work of others.
01:19It's that it's continuing to improve its processes to ensure human creativity can thrive.
01:25While there are legal protections for artists like Lucy, it can be difficult to enforce them.
01:31Lucy is choosing to raise awareness.
01:34I think the biggest thing that we as like a community and like everyone online can do is just speak
01:40about it and spread awareness about it.
01:43Consumers can also play a part.
01:44It's time for people to sort of think through their ethics of authenticity, creativity,
01:51the value for them of artists and trying to choose the authentic product
01:55and trying to make known to businesses and platforms that they don't want to be seeing the artificial content.
02:01For more information, please visit us at www.fema.orgم.
