AI-Generated Junk Is Flooding Etsy - The Atlantic

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AI-Generated Junk Is Flooding Etsy - The Atlantic

Coloring books, stickers, mugs, and T-shirts are being pumped out by AI-assisted hustlers. Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic June 15, 2023, 7:45 AM ET According to the amateur online-business advisers of YouTube, the age of easily accessible AI is the age of asking and receiving. ChatGPT and other AI tools are ascendant in popular culture, as is the idea that you can ask them for anything. You can even ask them to make you rich. Joshua Mayo, a YouTube personality who makes videos about work-from-home “side hustles” and methods for becoming a millionaire before age 30, told me recently that his audience of mostly young people doesn’t want to work a standard 9-to-5 job for several decades and then retire off of their 401(k). “A lot of them don’t find that appealing,” he said. “So they’re kind of turning to side hustles.” Younger generations often talk about the total fakeness of money and the surreal position of always having to collect it. Logically, they want to make money online by creating something out of nothing. And with the help of AI, they can even make money by making nothing out of nothing. “A lot of my videos now have some type of AI in them, even if it’s not specifically an AI side hustle or an AI business,” Mayo told me. “You can still use or implement AI into the processes.” In one of his videos about using AI to make money, he explains that images created with Midjourney can be made in seconds and sold as digital downloads on Etsy—a way to tap into the “multimillion-dollar market” of clip art. Incidentally, this is one of the first ideas that ChatGPT gave me when I asked it to give me 10 ideas for online businesses: “The ideas stage is actually perfect for AI,” Mayo confirmed. “You can ask the AI to give you ideas for products to sell on Etsy and it will spit out a big list for you.” Of course, you do have to sift through the list and use some human reasoning to determine if the ideas will work. You also have to hurry. “It’s a gold rush,” Mayo said. “It’s this era that may or may not last forever.” In “How to Make Your First $1000 With ChatGPT (still early),” a YouTuber lets viewers know they should get started “before everyone understands this stuff.” “You need to capitalize on the opportunities while they persist,” another YouTuber explains in “The Best Way to Get RICH with A.I. (2023).” The urgency conveyed in these videos is softened with the reassurance that all of this is easy. You can take advantage of the “easiest” AI side hustle of the year (making stickers of AI-generated art) while possessing “No Skill.” You can make money with AI on YouTube’s short-form video app using “NO FACE OR VOICE.” Watching a video titled “How to Make $10,561 / month with Digital Products Using AI,” you can see that the promises of ease are true but not exactly the whole story. The host asks ChatGPT to list some ideas for children’s coloring pages, then puts those ideas into Midjourney to generate the images, which she then sells on marketplaces like Etsy. The results are impressive, in that they look basically like coloring-book pages. They’re black-and-white, with places to color in. However, in one image, a chicken has three legs, and in another, a fox has a bird mouth. The host doesn’t appear to notice this, or she doesn’t remark upon it. Whatever, there are plenty of other ideas. You can buy them—a digital download of “250 Digital Product Ideas That Sell For Passive Income” is currently marked down to $3.29 from $13.14—or you can generate them. I asked ChatGPT for ideas that were different than the ones I’d already seen in the hustle videos—I didn’t want to make digital scrapbook paper, patterns for drop-shipped phone cases, résumé templates, stickers, mugs, candles, recolorized vintage photos, or portraits of people’s pets dressed up as British royalty. The bot suggested that I sell downloadable embroidery patterns, printable party supplies such as cupcake toppers or party games, and a fill-in-the-blank mindfulness journal. These all felt like pretty good ideas, probably because they sounded like Etsy products that already exist. Read: Women are buying ‘essential AF’ shirts, candles, and wine glasses I had also learned from the YouTubers that the T-shirt and mug markets on Etsy are never, ever saturated. If you can think of something to write on a...