AI Is Breaking the Knitting Pattern Economy

Comments · 452

• MO

  @mostlyvoid.partiallystars · 1 month ago

  Please remember - if you interact with these tools you are 1) volunteering to train them for free with your data and 2) supporting the proliferation of tools that use stolen artistic works.

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• AM

  @AmandaMcCarterWrites · 1 month ago

  I've said it before, I'll say it again. Generative AI is theft. Point blank.

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• NA

  @nailguncrouch1017 · 1 month ago

  And all this is why I reuse older patterns, my friends and I trade our books, and watch for magazines when thrifting.

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• JU

  @Julie-qr5sm · 1 month ago

  As an inexperienced knitter, my first reaction if the pattern went wrong would be what did I do wrong.  Not assume the pattern is wrong.

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• ME

  @melancholymua · 1 month ago

  At this rate people are gonna forget how to breathe on their own🤦🏻‍♀️ I don't understand how people can slide into helplessness so quickly and seemingly forget how to do all the admin work they've been doing for years. at least to me this is bigger than AI usage, this is a matter of some of the most powerful people in the world pushing everyone to use a technology that teaches learned helplessness and complete dependence.

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• BA

  @Bandwagons · 1 month ago (edited)

  This makes perfect sense to me because it&apos;s in line with how I&apos;m seeing AI used at my job (I work in healthcare IT). People are using it to &quot;advance their skills&quot; above the level they actually have, so they&apos;re basically pretending to be better at blank than they are. The problem (besides the impacts of AI in general) is that by doing this, they never actually develop those skills. And then when they see how easy that was, they start using it for skills that they do know how to do as a time saver, which means that they stop practicing these skills and lose them. <br>We&apos;re making ourselves less useful, talented people in the name of efficiency and clout, basically. And if/when the AI is taken away, now you never actually learned to design patterns.

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• ST

  @starshipcaptain · 1 month ago

  This insistence on using A.I. to generate patterns is most of the reason I’ve started designing patterns myself. No risk of A.I. being involved if it came straight from my brain!

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• FI

  @FionaC1 · 1 month ago (edited)

  Great video. I do feel you are being too generous in trusting the motives of people spewing AI patterns/AI tweaked patterns onto Etsy though. It’s about money. They may have a tiny bit of knowledge, but I don’t believe many, if any, are making a noble error here and just trying to speed their process. And I don’t believe the responses you got from Etsy sellers (I wouldn’t call them designers) are truthful. (Based on my own experience of lying sellers who claim original IP despite this being a clear falsehood)<br><br>“Based on human templates” surely just means that like all AI it’s trained on stolen human work. <br><br>For me, I don’t like any generative AI use in crochet patterns (not a knitter), and I know that the designers I trust feel the same - including for tech editing and grading, and product photos.

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• TA

  @tastybabie · 1 month ago

  very interesting and professional video, i appreciate your transparency and the way you avoided accusatory language.<br><br>a couple of points I want to touch on: <br><br>LLM AI was trained on content scraped from the internet without consent, which means that any use of it is utilizing the knowledge, skill, and labor of real people without their consent or compensation for their work. generating an AI image for your knitwear pattern uses data scraped from real photographers, designers, etc. generating a PDF to organize your notes uses data scraped from tech editors or graphic designers who put together real patterns. and AI generation is not free—most of this is going to require some sort of subscription. that means that income for this scraped data is going to data centers and LLM server owners (companies like Claude, ChatGPT etc) rather than the people whose work allowed AI to even be capable of “filling in the gaps” <br><br>in addition to that, on your topic of designers who have tech editors and graphic designers, etc—using AI to outsource that labor instead means that they don’t have to do pay those people anymore. it would be unrealistic and naive to assume that not a single designer would make that choice (and i am not accusing anyone, i’m speaking completely hypothetically!)

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• GR

  @grumpusm1651 · 1 month ago (edited)

  The line is very clear for me. If you use AI I&apos;m not buying from you. And once you&apos;re busted for it, I am not going to ever trust you. Even somebody as prolific for the crocheting community as TL Yarn crafts had her pattern stolen by a person using AI. You are not an artist if you are using AI to write your patterns. Do the damn work.

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• LA

  @ladameduloch5139 · 1 month ago

  There is something that really upsets me when it comes to AI use and anti-AI discourses. Most of the time you&apos;ll read about theft, environmental consequences etc but almost never about exploitation of the Global South workers. It&apos;s so terrifying to see them being forced to watch review everything that goes through these generative AI tools. They are paid so little to work endless hours watching horrifying stuff, ending up committing suicide but no one ever talk about them. I don&apos;t know what discourse would eventually discourage people from using those tools that kill everything and everyone. As you said, it doesn&apos;t seem effective to stop it, only to hide it. There is a lot of work ahead of us if we want to end this nonsense (and cruaulty)

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• TO

  @topstitchgirl · 1 month ago

  Your theory makes sense to me because of a very recent experience of a friend with a crochet pattern. She struggled to finish a crochet dress and ended up giving it 2 stars, and had an exchange with the designer who got upset over the rating. When my friend asked them about how the pattern was created, the designer used similar language in her response. The pattern was bought on Ravelry.

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