For Sellers

Why this matters to your shop

Hobbsy's promise to buyers is that the work they buy is human-made. That promise is also our promise to you — that you're not competing against generated content mass-uploaded by people with no investment in craft. Enforcing this policy is how we protect your livelihood.

If you're a maker who has been frustrated by what AI dumping has done to other handmade marketplaces, this page is the version of the policy written from your side of the table.

The core test

AI uses that are explicitly allowed

You can use AI for any of the following without restriction or disclosure:

• Listing descriptions, titles, and tag suggestions. Write your own, or use AI to draft and edit. Either is fine.
• Translation. Translate listings into other languages so international buyers can find your work.
• Photo cleanup. Background removal, color correction, exposure fix, dust removal — the boring photo-editing tasks that used to need Photoshop expertise.
• Style filters applied to your own photographs. If you took the photo of your work, an Instagram-style filter is fine.
• Customer service drafts. Use AI to draft responses to buyer questions. You're still responsible for what you send, but the drafting tool is fine.
• Pricing suggestions. Many sellers struggle to price their work. AI suggestions based on category and materials are a tool, not a creative act.
• Pattern grading and sizing math. If you make clothing or knitwear, calculating sizes across a range is math, not creative work.
• Accessibility tools. Alt-text generation, screen-reader-friendly descriptions, captions on shop videos.
• Identification assistance for vintage items. Using AI to help research a piece's provenance is allowed (and recommended for disclosure — see below).

Allowed with required disclosure

A few legitimate creative practices use AI in a way that buyers should know about. These are fully welcome on Hobbsy, but the listing must carry a disclosure badge:

• AI-narrated audiobooks of your own writing. If you're an author who can't afford a human narrator and you use an AI voice to narrate your book, this is allowed but must be disclosed. Some buyers want a human voice performance and need the option to filter these out.
• Procedural / generative art. If you wrote the code that produces the image, you are the artist. This is a 60+ year old art form (Vera Molnár, Casey Reas, Tyler Hobbs) that predates modern AI by decades. Disclosure is required because the production method matters to some buyers.
• AI-assisted vintage identification (recommended, not required). When you use AI tools to research the age, origin, or maker of a vintage item, disclosing this protects you in disputes. Sellers who voluntarily disclose tend to have fewer claims against them.

What is prohibited

The following are not allowed on Hobbsy and listings will be removed when discovered. This is not an exhaustive list but covers the categories we see most often:

• AI-generated images sold as original art. Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, Firefly, and similar outputs are not eligible to list as art regardless of how much the seller "art directed" the prompt or refined the result.
• AI-generated 3D models printed and sold as sculpture. If the form was generated by an AI model, the physical print is not handmade work — it's a physical instance of generated output.
• AI-generated music sold as composed pieces. Suno, Udio, and similar tools generate the composition. Selling the output as your composition is prohibited.
• Reselling AI-generated content with cosmetic edits. Lightly retouching a generated image, changing colors, adding a frame, or compositing two generations together does not transform AI output into human work.
• AI-generated patterns sold as your designs. Knit, sewing, or embroidery patterns generated by AI and listed as the seller's original pattern.
• Mass-produced items listed as one-of-a-kind handmade. Whether or not AI was involved, items that are produced at industrial scale and listed as individual handmade work are prohibited under the same principle.
• Drop-shipped goods. Items made by someone else and shipped from a third party to fulfill your orders are not handmade by you, regardless of the source.

The mass-production test

Some categories are hard to enforce on a per-item basis. CNC-burned wood patterns, laser-cut acrylic, machine-knit garments — these can all be made by a person operating a machine, or they can be drop-shipped from a factory. Detection at the listing level isn't reliable.

For these categories we apply the mass-production test at the shop level. A shop that lists 200 nearly identical machine-cut items per week and ships from an address that doesn't match a workshop is not a maker, even if every individual item is technically not AI-generated. We look at scale, consistency, and shipping patterns rather than trying to evaluate every listing on aesthetics.

If your listing is reported

If a buyer or another seller reports your listing as a possible policy violation, here is what happens:

1. You will receive a notification with the reason for the report and a link to respond.
2. The listing remains visible during review unless the report is severe or the violation is obvious from the listing itself.
3. You can submit evidence that the work is yours. The next section explains what counts as evidence.
4. A human moderator — not an AI — reviews the evidence and decides.
5. If the report is found to be unfounded, the listing is cleared and the report is logged. Repeated false reports against the same seller are tracked.
6. If the report is upheld, the listing is removed and you are notified of the reasoning. Depending on history, further action may apply.

Evidence guide — what convinces a moderator

When you challenge a report, the burden is on you to show that the work is yours. The following kinds of evidence are most effective. None alone is required; a combination is usually sufficient.

The simplest version: a sixty-second video of you making the thing on your workbench, with your other listings visibly behind you, is usually all the evidence anyone needs. Many sellers who get reported respond with this and the report is closed within a day.

If you submit work in good faith and it's still removed

Mistakes happen. Moderators are human and the rules contain judgment calls. If you believe a decision was wrong, you can appeal. Appeals are reviewed by a different moderator than the original decision. There is no fee or penalty for appealing in good faith.

Repeat violations

We use a graduated response. A single removal is not a shop-ending event — most sellers fix the issue and move on. A pattern of removals across multiple listings is treated more seriously and can result in shop suspension. We will always tell you where you stand.

A word on anxiety

We know reading enforcement policies is stressful. The vast majority of sellers on Hobbsy will never have a listing reported, and the vast majority of reports are resolved in the seller's favor with simple process evidence. We are not looking for reasons to remove your work. We are looking for AI-generated content sold as original art and obvious mass-production passing as handmade. If that is not you, you are not the target of this policy.

Other places to look