AI scams have infiltrated the knitting and crochet world – why it matters for everyone [Video]

It’s no surprise that scammers and spammers have embraced AI. It’s a technology almost tailor-made to force-multiply reprehensible activity. What is surprising is that they have used it to scam crafters and makers — and it’s probably only going to get worse.

Searches on Etsy for pattern, plan, and recipe each return 1,000+ results. All of these are digital documents that AIs can produce. But it’s not just fake AI documents that might be for sale on Etsy. We all know that spammers flood the internet with garbage sites that return in searches, used as link farms, and to provide SEO juice to other scammy sites. In this article, I’ll show you how unknowingly downloading AI-generated garbage can cause you frustration and cost you money.

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As one example, we’ll look at the yarn crafts of knitting and crochet. But this problem could just as easily haunt …