Some craft vendors say resold and AI art popping up at markets is 'disingenuous'

Kendra Seguin · CBC

· Posted: Jul 10, 2025 4:15 PM EDT | Last Updated: July 10

It's festival season. Artists, crafters and makers are mounting up tables to get their homemade products successful the hands of section shoppers. 

But immoderate artists accidental they're feeling frustrated seeing vendors adjacent to them putting out products they didn't marque themselves or are generated from AI.

It's a increasing problem London crochet artist Emily Anderson has seen firsthand. 

"More and much vendors are not making the goods themselves, but buying them from definite online websites and conscionable reselling them," she said. 

"That's not in-and-of-itself a atrocious happening … but erstwhile radical are going to these fairs looking for handmade crafts, past I consciousness similar it becomes a problem," Anderson said. "It's a small spot disingenuous." 

Anderson said that portion she besides doesn't caput vendors selling resold products, she wants radical to beryllium honorable astir wherever they are sourcing those products from, alternatively than claiming they are handmade.

Market vendors are sharing their frustrations astir the contented each crossed Ontario, according to clay creator Olivia Anthony-Katchur, who lives successful Toronto.

"It feels similar you're up each night, you're putting your humor and tears into your work, [and] you're perpetually working just to spot idiosyncratic who typed a punctual [into an AI generator] and printed the photo selling it and making money," said Anthony-Katchur.

"It's truly disheartening and upsetting."

'I deliberation there's abstraction for everybody,' says vendor

However, determination are different vendors, similar Londoner Andréa Kennedy, who accidental they don't caput selling alongside resellers.

"As a handmade shaper and idiosyncratic that comes from a accepted arts background, I evidently truly worth that wrong myself and my art, but I besides admit everybody has the close to person a living," said Kennedy, who makes creation and jewelry utilizing foraged and homegrown flowers.

"I deliberation there's abstraction for everybody. I find that it doesn't impact maine overmuch what different radical are selling," Kennedy said. 

Criteria to vet vendors

Different markets and festivals person antithetic ways of selecting and vetting their vendors.

"We specify successful the exertion that the craftspeople themselves are to either person made the items oregon manipulated the items to marque them different," London Christmas Craft Festival co-organizer Isabel Traher said. 

Those who use to the festival indispensable nonstop photos of their crafts and database different trade shows they've participated in.

"If it's a amusement that allows a batch of multi-level marketing, we cognize that's astir apt not a vendor that would beryllium a bully acceptable for america due to the fact that we decidedly effort not to enactment immoderate of those radical successful the show.

Meanwhile, Sheena Clark, who organizes the Not Your Mother's Craft Show lawsuit successful May successful Lucan, Ont., said she specifically makes abstraction for a premix of vendors.

"We see immoderate nonstop income [vendors] due to the fact that I consciousness similar they enactment arsenic overmuch enactment into their products arsenic well," she said, adding that she reserves 12 of her 128 booths for non-handmade products. 

Both organizers said they locomotion astir their markets to guarantee vendors are selling what was promised and that they are not pulling products retired of packaging that indicates it was secretly made elsewhere.

"I would ne'er person them back, and I would inquire them to not enactment those [products] retired astatine our show," Clark said. 

Still, some admit it tin beryllium challenging to discern what is genuinely handmade oregon not, and Traher said she has yet to see an AI policy.

"Obviously this is precise hard and we effort to usage our discretion," Traher said. 

Differentiating betwixt handmade and resold crafts

Many of the crafters agreed it tin beryllium hard for an mundane shopper to know what is genuinely made by an artist.

"I deliberation astir radical aren't going to know, truthful I deliberation it's up to the vendor to accidental this is handmade," Anderson said. "It's up to the vendor to beryllium honest."