AI is changing how people create, shop, and run their businesses. People come to Etsy not only to find special items, but also to connect with the people behind them. And as this technology makes it easier than ever to generate content, we believe human creativity, craftsmanship and connection are becoming more valuable. It’s Etsy’s job to protect that value.

So while AI can make sellers’ everyday work easier, it also raises big questions for us at Etsy: What role should AI play on our marketplace? Can buyers trust that the listing they’re seeing matches the item they’ll receive? And what does AI mean for the future of creativity?

In my role leading Customer Operations, my team and I think about these questions every day. We’ve heard from our community that they want to hear more from us about AI’s place on Etsy. That feedback is fair.

Our marketplace only works when buyers and sellers trust each other. Sellers need clear guidance and confidence that their creativity and craftsmanship will be represented fairly; buyers need to understand what they’re buying and the human involvement behind it. We know we have work to do to uphold this standard on Etsy.

Here’s what we’re committing to today: AI should support our sellers' creativity and craftsmanship, not replace them. When shopping on Etsy you should always be able to understand the role sellers play in every item.

With this as our north star, we’re actively working to address the questions AI raises for our marketplace. This work is hard, and we don’t have every answer today. But I believe this is an important moment for Etsy, and that these initial steps are putting us on the right path.

A clearer standard for AI on Etsy

Nearly six million creative entrepreneurs sell on Etsy, and nearly 90% run their shops on their own. Tools that help with the demands of running a business can give sellers more time for their creative work.

The challenge is the vast array of tools available and the different ways sellers may use them. Some uses help sellers bring creative ideas to life or make the tedious tasks involved in running a business more efficient; others can obscure whether there was meaningful human involvement, or misrepresent what an item actually is. A blanket ban on AI tools would treat those uses as if they were the same.

So, we are taking a different approach. We’re working to realize our guiding commitment through a combination of clearer policy, stronger enforcement, and improvements to the shopping experience on Etsy.

Our House Rules set the foundation for what is allowed to be sold on our marketplace, so this is a natural place for us to start. We are updating our Listing Image Requirements to clarify our expectations, and pairing those policies with education and practical, in-product guidance to help sellers make choices that build buyer confidence:

• To help buyers see the most authentic representation of a listing, sellers will need to include at least one unaltered photo of the actual item against a real background. Any supplemental AI-assisted listing images must accurately represent the item a buyer will receive.
• We’re ensuring human creativity is part of every listing by making clear that bot-generated listings without human involvement are not allowed, nor is AI use that misleads buyers or creates fraudulent inventory.
• Functional guides, such as patterns and recipes, which require buyers to put in effort to achieve a finished product, cannot be created using AI. Listings for functional guides must also show a real result made using the instructions.

With these changes, sellers are still required to disclose when AI is used to create an item. You can read more about the updated policies we shared with sellers here.

Closing the gap in the Etsy experience

We know that rules alone can’t help buyers find items they’ll love or understand the role humans played in creating them. We also need to keep building an Etsy experience that connects buyers with the right item, from the right seller, and gives them confidence in what they’re purchasing.

That starts with an investment in tools and enforcement. We’re leveraging technology to better identify misleading imagery and fraudulent listings. As those tools continue to get stronger and more accurate, we’ll carefully test enforcement and continue to expand removals of violative listings in the coming months. We're also making it easier for users to report listings they believe include misleading AI imagery, which will help us better understand how they perceive AI misuse.

We’re also continuing to explore how we can give buyers more context about what they’re seeing and make it easier to discover the creativity behind the items on Etsy. For example, shoppers can expect to learn about items through richer reviews, and browse content highlighting sellers’ creative processes.

How we’ll keep evolving

These changes are an important first step, not the finish line. Doing this work well will take time, but we feel a great deal of urgency and are committed to making meaningful progress that our community can feel.

We’ll keep listening to buyers and sellers, be open about what’s working and what isn’t good enough yet, and continue improving our policies and tools. We’ll also be flexible as this technology continues to change, while staying grounded in our core commitment.

The care in a hand-thrown mug, the eye behind a vintage find, the skill in a custom graphic design—this is the human touch that brings people to Etsy. Trust lets buyers connect with that creativity and sellers share it with confidence. Our responsibility is to make that trust real. That’s what keeping commerce human means on our marketplace.