18/10/2026
Let’s talk about AI...
I posted a picture of this pendant earlier this week and it seems a lot of you really liked it. I gained a heap of new followers, had some spam arrive on Etsy and then received this completely unsolicited AI-generated video from somebody in Nigeria featuring my pendant.
The animation is clever, I’ll give it that, but it bears very little resemblance to the actual piece I made. The stone is shiny, not matt like the original. The colours are different. The way it catches the light isn’t real. Yet at first glance it looks incredibly convincing. And that’s what worries me.
I’m not completely anti-AI. I use it in my day job to speed up certain tasks, help me find information quickly and cut down some of the admin. As a tool, I can absolutely see it’s value.
What I struggle with is how quickly we’re becoming surrounded by things that look real but aren’t. Images, videos, artwork, advertising, social media posts. It’s becoming harder and harder to know what’s genuine.
As someone who designs and makes jewellery by hand, creativity is in the process. It’s in the experimenting, the mistakes, the ideas that don’t work and the ones that unexpectedly do. That’s where originality comes from.
When I look online now, I see more and more content that has been generated rather than created. The technology is impressive, but I do wonder what happens if we stop valuing the human side of making things.
Maybe that’s my age showing, but I find it quite unsettling how easily we can now be shown something that isn’t real and accept it as if it is.
I’d genuinely love to know where other people sit on this. Are you embracing AI? How are you using AI in your own life or work? Does it excite you, worry you, or a bit of both?
