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The Puget Sound Local Yarn Shop Tour is a fun annual event for fiber art folks in the PNW. This year it will be from May 14th-18th. If you’re into knitting, crochet, or visiting different yarn shops, I highly recommend it! Every year the tour event organizers hold an art contest for their logo. The winning artwork is printed on promotional material and tote bags, and the winning artist gets $250 in gift certificates to spend at the yarn shops. I entered it this year and didn’t win but my jaw dropped when I saw the winning entry was clearly AI-generated. I double-checked the contest rules which state “the submission must be the original design and artwork created by the Entrant.” That directly rules out AI-generated entries. I confirmed my suspicions by running the image through a few AI art detectors and repeatedly got the same result of 96%+ probability of being AI-generated. I respectfully emailed the tour organizers to let them know they had awarded a prize to an AI-generated submission. They responded politely, but said, “Please be assured that we have confirmed with the artist that no AI was used in creating this year’s winning artwork submission.“ Honestly? I don’t blame the judges (they’re yarn shop owners, not digital art experts) for not being able to tell this was AI-generated, but I do blame the artist for cheating. This is supposed to be a fun, community-focused art contest where people put real time, skill, and heart into creating their art. Seeing someone bypass that with AI and then lie about it is a huge disappointment. I just wanted to share this for awareness, especially for other artists and folks planning to participate in the yarn store tour. If you’re picking up merch, just know that the logo art this year wasn’t made by a human. Disappointing, but worth knowing. submitted by /u/shutuprobot |
