AI Embroidery Patterns: Why They’re Harmful & How To Spot Them

Artificial intelligence has become prevalent in almost every facet of life, including embroidery. You have probably stumbled across AI-generated images that depict embroidery. Some of the photos may have been convincing enough that, at a glance, you may not have realized it wasn’t real!

Why AI Embroidery Can Be Harmful

I’ll be the first to admit that AI can be beneficial for specific tasks; I use it occasionally for things like business analytics, organizing, and auditing data. However, I believe AI mostly shouldn’t be used within the embroidery community, especially not for pattern designers.

In this article, I wanted to share how and why AI can harm the embroidery community and how you can spot AI patterns. It harms not only embroidery artists who sell their original work but also customers who are shopping for a pattern to stitch.

Problems with Plagiarism

I don’t use AI for referencing images or for making my patterns. I have always felt uneasy about using AI in my design process, so I’ve chosen not to.

I don’t think I’m in the minority regarding how I feel about AI art. There have been lots of discussions in the art world about the ethics of AI-generated art.

The main reason I won’t use AI is that these models have been trained on other artists’ work, making the “art” they generate questionable and unoriginal.

Some will counter this, saying that “art is just recycled ideas anyway.” But there is nothing human or even creative about a computer model creating an image. You barely have to think or use creativity to prompt a model to create one.

In fact, the image I featured at the start of this post is an example of what an image generator will produce. It is not the most convincing image out there, but it took me less than a minute to type in the prompt to generate a relatively decent photo.

It Goes Against The Nature Of Handmade

The other reason I disagree with using AI for embroidery art because it goes against my motivations and reasons for making embroidery art.

Yes, embroidery is slow, and sometimes, I wish I could crank out more of it with all of my creative ideas. But embroidery is handmade, meaning it is intended to be made by hand!

For me, embroidery is a way to get in touch with an age-old handcraft.

It’s about expressing my creativity, problem-solving, and reconnecting with various traditional skills and crafts that many of my ancestors did for enjoyment and sometimes even out of necessity.

From Hardanger that my Norwegian great-grandmother made to quilts that my Mennonite great-grandmother stitched, you can’t tell me some computer-generated design is better or more meaningful than some of the heirlooms that women in my family made with their own two hands.

I cherish these heirlooms so much because of the love and hard work that went into them, as well as the invaluable skills that have continued to be passed down through the generations.

AI Embroidery Patterns Are Deceptive and Unrealistic

Do a search on Etsy for “hand embroidery patterns,” and you’ll most likely encounter hundreds, if not thousands, of AI-generated patterns.

While the images are improving and becoming more accurate, any seasoned stitcher can look at them and notice stitches that don’t make sense or an overall finish that looks different from what real hand embroidery looks like.

These AI patterns appear to be completed designs, but once you look at the product descriptions, you’ll usually only get a line drawing with minimal instructions on basic embroidery stitches.

While I understand the convenience of having a design that you can transfer (I sell a handful of line drawings and see nothing wrong with that), these patterns appear to be completed in the product thumbnail, which is deceptive.

In reality, the product doesn’t help the customer in the stitching process, and the “finished product” will never look the way the product photo looks. This leaves the customer feeling lost and confused. I have personally had multiple people email me asking for suggestions on how to embroider an AI-made design they purchased.

I’ve seen some people rationalize and defend using AI images for patterns they sell, explaining that they know how to embroider and check that the stitches are accurate. However, even if the stitches appear to be mostly accurate, most AI-generated embroidery has a look that I have never seen someone replicate in real life. Kelly McKernan said it perfectly in this New Yorker article: Is AI Stealing From Artists? It has “this general sugary, candy look.”

Not to mention, most AI-generated embroidery looks the same. What were initially founded as “handmade marketplaces” are sadly bombarded with the same embroidery styles, giving everything the same bland, and dare I say it, artificial look.

How To Spot AI Generated Patterns

While shops are usually supposed to disclose if they used AI in their process, not all of them do. Here are a few common patterns to look out for:

• The accompanying product video is usually generic and doesn’t show the specific embroidery design that the listing is for.
• The overall appearance of the embroidery can look like it’s popping off the fabric, and the design may appear smooth, almost too perfect.
• The stitches may appear to lay or curve in unnatural ways.
• The art style is very inconsistent when you look at the whole shop.
• Every listing has mock-up quality backgrounds – perfect lighting, generic or repetitive backgrounds that look surreal, etc.
• No progress photos of the stitching process are included.
• Customer photos look nothing like the product photo.

Is It Wrong To Use AI For Reference Images?

While I don’t necessarily see anything wrong with generating an AI image and referencing it for personal work, the problem I see with it is that most of these sellers aren’t even stitching or testing out the designs. They are, frankly, being lazy. They are pumping out hundreds, if not thousands, of unrealistic AI-generated embroidery images, and their art has no personal spin on it.

This, in turn, confuses customers and saturates the market even more, which makes artists who make authentic work suffer. Most of these AI embroidery shops sell their designs for unreasonably low prices, which also harms and cheapens the market.

To put it in perspective, I work full time doing embroidery, and the most I have ever produced is 3 or 4 embroideries in a month—and that is on a VERY productive month. No one can keep up with a shop that puts up 500 listings for embroidery patterns in such a short amount of time.

Conclusion

This article may have felt scathing at specific points, but I feel very passionately about this, and I think it’s an important topic to discuss.

Whether you decide to support AI embroidery pattern shops is your decision to make. For me, supporting shops that create art that reflects an authentic human experience and actually celebrates the spirit of handmade seems way more meaningful.

If you’re searching for authentically made embroidery designs, I have many hand-tested and hand-stitched designs here in the shop. I would also be happy to point you in the right direction to other embroidery artists who do fantastic work!

Please leave a comment with your thoughts and questions. And as always, keep embroidery handmade!

Amanda

Amanda is a hand embroidery teacher and artist. With over 15 years of experience in the craft industry and embroidery, she owns and runs Crewel Ghoul, sharing accessible tutorials and patterns to help inspire fellow crafters to get creative. In addition to running this website, she teaches on Skillshare and Youtube.