AI-generated books and images are threatening the nearly 500-year-old art of lace making.
It’s already come for the crochet community, and researchers have tried to teach machines to knit. But lace-making—a craft that even Renaissance artists struggled to master, and in which there are a literal infinite number of patterns to be created—is now having its AI slop moment.
Mary Mangan, the librarian for her New England-based lace making group, told me that she first became aware of AI infiltrating lace spaces when someone in her group asked her to research a book that featured a cover photo that she wanted to try to make herself. “So I began to research the book. It smelled funny and I tried to search for the author's other work but couldn't find any,” Mangan said. She asked r/BobbinLace, a Reddit community for the bobbin lace-making technique, and users there helped track down the original, not-AI image from a lace catalog that the cover photo seemed to be based on.
Longtime lace makers and experts from all around the community have started raising the alarm on AI grifting in their tight-knit community. Karen Bovard-Sayre, who has published several books about lace techniques, posted a video in November addressing the issue, saying she found 36 books about lace and tatting—a lacemaking technique—that seemed AI generated. She said she was looking at Amazon books about tatting to see what else was being published on the topic, and found many of the AI books targeting beginners.
“As you probably all know, the tatting world's not that big even though it's around the world, but we kind of know who's doing what, who's making content, who's making books and all that,” Bovard-Sayre said in her video. “I started reading the summaries and they all kind of sounded flowery and didn't really say what they were, and then I started looking at the covers and back covers, and said wait a minute, something's wrong here.” She spends the rest of the video demonstrating what these books get wrong, and how to spot AI generated lace making materials.
Some of the AI signs Bovard-Sayre points out include odd punctuation in the authors’ name (in the case of the book she’s examining in her video, “Sheila .A Richard,” where there’s a period before the middle initial), references to video tutorials like “This is a wonderful instructional video” which makes no sense in a printed book, obvious misspellings, and distorted or blurry photos.
She also finds designs in the book that she recognized as being the work of other lace designers, including Marilee Rockley, a fiber artist who specializes in tatting. Rockley also recently addressed the rise in AI generated materials on her website. “Some of you may have heard about the miserable thieves who are using Artificial Intelligence technology to ‘make’ books to sell,” she wrote. “Really horrible, fake books loaded with wrong information (lies) and stolen photos. They're so bad it would be laughable except they hurt a lot of innocent people who are looking to learn a new-to-them craft.”
Preying on beginners’ lack of knowledge and relative inability to spot blatant fakes is a tactic used in other AI book grifts, too. The mushroom foraging community recently discovered AI scam books were flooding Amazon, directing newcomers to bad, potentially deadly misinformation. Unlike eating a poisonous mushroom because a chatbot or AI book told you it’s safe, buying a book on lacemaking that contains sloppily-generated images or instructions isn’t a matter of life and death—but it does threaten to devalue and dilute the integrity of a centuries-old art, as well as deterring newcomers.
“Lace is a small hobby and a pretty tight community. We know who the designers and vendors are, and we trust them. However, until you become part of the lace community there's no way to know who is trustworthy and what is dubious. You need some level of skill and time within the network to really assess this,” Mangan told me. “Unfortunately, for newcomers who might be excited to dive into this hobby, they could get burned by the inadequate books—and frankly the thievery—of the work of our cherished lacemakers and designers. This could sour newbies on the craft and that would be unfortunate. And it could harm designers who opt out of sharing their works, and we'll all lose then.”
Lacemaker and textile historian Elena Kanagy-Loux told me she first noticed the proliferation of AI-generated books on bobbin lace while teaching a course last summer. A student showed her a book she’d recommended to her students on Amazon, but the recommended books on the site seemed off. “There were a number of suggested lace books with strange covers that did not represent real lace techniques, and subsequently I have been warning all of my students to avoid Amazon and buy from independent lace suppliers (a good practice for a multitude of reasons),” she said. “Now I see that there are a number of them advertising different lace techniques with strange AI images on the cover that don’t represent real lace or tools, and contents that—according to reviews—are either nonsense that provide no tangible instructions, or directly plagiarized from real lace books.”
Some of the books Elena Kanagy-Loux found on Amazon included:
- Bobbin Lace Crafting: Unleashing Your Creativity with Torchon Ground Patterns Book by Sarah DV Martin, which has a description that cites the book, as if it were a review. “Recently, I came across a fantastic book titled ‘Bobbin Lace Crafting: Unleashing Your Creativity with Torchon Ground Patterns’ that has truly inspired me in my lace making journey. The book not only provides detailed instructions on how to create stunning Torchon ground patterns but also offers valuable tips and tricks to help crafters unleash their creativity.” The cover shows crochet and machine-made lace on the cover, not bobbin lace.
- Lace Crafting Mastery: Beginner's Guide to Needle Tatting: Discover the Art of Needle Tatting to Create Stunning Lace Crafts by Alanah .F Thatcher. A reviewer wrote: “This is an AI written book whose parameters were set by someone who doesn’t know the difference between embroidery, tatting, and bobbin lace. That is like not knowing the difference between running, swimming, and cycling.”
- NEEDLE TATTING FOR BEGINNERS: MASTER THE ART WITH ESSENTIAL TECHNIQUES AND FOUR STUNNING PROJECTS: AN EXPERT GUIDE TO CREATING ELEGANT NEEDLE TATTED LACE WITH STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS by Evanna Harrington. The cover is AI-generated and “does not in any way resemble needle tatting (just a mess of threads, not real techniques)” Kanagy-Loux said.
- Bobbin Lace Mastery for Absolute Beginners: A Step by Step Guide to Elegant Patterns and Techniques in making Bobbin lace Paperback by Gloria Brock. Reviewers say it has no images inside and repeats instructions: “It keeps repeating the same thing over and over. It does provide some written instructions for a bookmark or flowers or leaves but doesn't provide visual patterns to use on the pillow,” one reviewer wrote. “I don't think this book is completed for a beginner since I am more confused now than before going over it. Sorry.”
- HOW TO MAKE BOBBIN LACE: A Step-by-Step Beginner’s Guide to Mastering Bobbin Lace Techniques and Patterns Paperback by Patricia Walcott, which has a cover that doesn’t even resemble bobbin lace
- The Bobbin Lace Bible: An Essential Book for Crafters by James XL Garcia, which a reviewer notes is ripping off the work of Jo Edkins, an established and respected bobbin lace instructor. The description follows the pattern seen on a lot of AI-generated books on Amazon, with phrases like “one thing I love” and “in conclusion” as if it’s a book report written by a grade school child. “Of course, no book is good, and ‘The Bobbin Lace Bible’ is not exempt from its flaws,” the description of the book says. “Some crafters may find certain sections a bit too technical or challenging, especially if they are complete beginners. However, with patience and practice, I believe that anyone can master the art of bobbin lace making with the help of this book.” Probably not!
I sent all of the above listings to Amazon for comment, and the platform removed all of them except for the first one. “We have content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale, and we have proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI-generated or not. We invest significant time and resources to ensure our guidelines are followed, and remove books that do not adhere to those guidelines," a spokesperson for Amazon told me in a statement. "We aim to provide the best possible shopping, reading, and publishing experience, and we are constantly evaluating developments that impact that experience, which includes the rapid evolution and expansion of generative AI tools. We continue to enhance our protections against non-compliant content, and our process and guidelines will keep evolving as we see changes in AI-driven publishing.”
Amazon is full of these books, but it’s not the only retailer selling them. Mangan showed me several she and others found on eBay, including Bobbin Lace Magic: Unlocking the Secrets of Colorous Book by Ethan CC Lee which, like the ones above, has a book-report description as if the author is reviewing their own book. And then there’s A Bobbin Lace Book by Tim M. Enoch, with a description that includes an error from generating the text: “This response was truncated by the cut-off limit (max tokens). Open the sidebar, Increase the parameter in the settings and then regenerate.” eBay did not respond to a request for comment.
Mangan wondered if the onslaught of AI-generated slop in lacemaking might drive people to connect to real humans more. “Gathering in groups and discussing valuable books might be a good outcome, and we can host public gatherings for the lace-curious folks,” she said. “One other thing that I do is to edit Wikipedia with good books as references when I hear about them—maybe that could become another route to connect people to higher quality and current materials.” Used and older books could become more valuable, too, she said.
“Over the years of posting videos about lacemaking on social media, I have gotten many snarky comments saying ‘AI will replace this.’ At first I laughed it off, because for lacemakers like myself the joy is in the process of working with our hands, which can never be replaced by technology,” Kanagy-Loux said. “But now I have genuine concerns that beginners seeking affordable books will be scammed by AI-generated books that contain no real information about the techniques and give up in frustration. This misinformation is why it is so important to me to share resources online and make knowledge about lacemaking and lace history accessible to a broader audience. Fortunately, our community continues to grow all the time, so I hope we can combat the proliferation of AI pattern books with the instructions of human beings.”
