#i spent way too long on this post | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

pomelowed · 5 months ago

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Just went down a rabbit hole yippee!!

I follow this blog called @/my-kawaii--world because I like the aesthetics and this post came across my feed: https://www.tumblr.com/my-kawaii--world/753409702367477760/hey-this-site-seems-sketchy-af-as-a-lot-of-the?source=share

Those stuffed animals were so cute that I immediately went to the store to order one! But before I did I, like I usually do when finding new online stores, looked around to see what else they sell. I like doing this just to see if the items are really mismatched or if the other listings seem to be lower quality than what I'm trying to order. Well, the store, called Lavender Creations, seemed to offer a lot of items I saw on places like Alibaba or Temu. In fact, the mushroom purse they sell is one my sister bought off of Aliexpress. No worries though, artists oftentimes get their creations ripped off by dropshippers and their ilk so wasn't a death knell but definitely was a red flag. This led me to check it on scamadvisor and whoo boy.

It scored 36/100. The site has existed for years and it has a SSL but I wasn't worried about the site being a scam that'll steal my credit card info, I was just trying to figure out if it was a dropshipper and welp. One of the negative reviews stated that the supposed flash sale was in fact a daily sale (and I can confirm since me writing this post took long enough that the sale that was supposed to end at midnight is still ongoing despite the fact it's currently 1 AM). That was a dead ringer that this site most definitely wasn't the original creator or at least someone reliable. So, google lens it was for a reverse image search aaaaand

yeah ok unsurprising. Will say, none of these listings have the black & white one I was going to buy and that the dandelionevine was the only other one to sell the white version but also it's selling them for $60 which is way more than lavender constellation that sells them for $44 or $30 with the "sale". Also, amazon link is dead unfortunately because it supposedly was being sold for $25, the cheapest yet.

Now, if this was simply just a case of dropshipping then I would've left it at my reblog I made warning others about it BUT there's that first listing, Plush This?? They're the reason I'm making this post.

As far as I can tell they're the original creators! Awesome, great I can purchase him from here even if it isn't the b&w version I wanted, let me just read the full listing to see the specifics,,,,,, wtf

WHAT??? WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT WAS DESIGNED BY AI????? THIS IS A CAN OF WORMS I DIDNT PLAN TO ENCOUNTER????? Apparently, that's their whole thing: let AI design a plush and then recreate it which is honestly a really cool concept if AI wasn't known for literally stealing others' work (I'm ignoring the fact it would also mean it takes designers' jobs, which is also a shame).

If the AI was ethically trained then I suppose it counts as an original work? It's a bit of a grey area since no one actually owns the likeness of a cat (not yet at least) and plenty of artists create their own works by referencing others. So, who's to say an AI doing the same thing is unethical? I mean, there's a real human effort being put into realizing an imaginary item because this doesn't seem to be the usual AI scam of rendering an image and pretending it's genuine to generate purchases. But that ignores the fact there are limitations to artists on what they can produce (copyright laws exist and fair use clauses do too). So AI shouldn't be exempt from giving its fair dues to the people it should be "inspired" by and it should also be punished if it steals like a human does. Plus, the current state of AI is a lot more like replication than anything near inspiration so really that question cannot be applied in the current generation of AI.

There's one giant elephant in the room I haven't addressed yet: who is to say that the cat plush isn't based on some niche Etsy creator who had their creation ripped off by the AI model? Idk how it was taught so idk if the images were ethically sourced and thus if my money is going into a design that hasn't been stolen in some way. I'm sure they gave the AI a bunch of reference images of a Devon Rex from different angles and told it to make it a stuffed animal. But was the AI fed ethically sourced references of what is a plush? Or was it given Etsy and told to go ham in copying everything??

And, if the AI model WAS trained with stolen images, how awful really is the dropshipping aside from the ungodly prices?? I mean, my usual issues with dropshipping are: they try to sell junk for obscene prices, original works are reproduced without permission, & the profits of the original creator are stolen. But which of those issues are applicable in this scenario? The original work is seemingly high quality as implied with the reviews I see on Lavender Constellations & Plush This, so not all listings are churning out low quality crap, meaning the first issue is resolved. I mean, if people are receiving quality items that they feel is worth the price then there isn't any issue in that department. But those last two issues I have are the kicker, who is the original creator in this scenario?? Is it Plush This or is it the amalgamation of artists that go uncredited?? If the former then, yeah, these sites should not be selling their work. Yet, the latter seems much more in line with what I know about how AI is trained: unabashedly scanning and copying others' works without consent or compensation. Thus, I don't really feel too badly about it being resold on so many stores. It's already stolen work so they're all thieves to me.

Man, idk. It's unfortunate AI isn't simply a tool and the current state of things have festered and spread thanks to the lack of regulations. I imagine the AI models we have today that are made of stolen artworks will just be the concrete foundation and people wont see reparations for their work. Kinda one of those "them's the breaks (brakes?) kid" where laws will come into place that'll prevent AI from stealing others works. The question is will the people it already stole from be repaid? Or will they just have to live with the fact that the AI modules that are common use have stolen their work and wont stop continuing to profit off of that theft into the foreseeable future?

All of this is to say I'm not even sure if Plush This is the real creator!! I know I said I was almost certain they were but that's really only because the whole marketing scheme of their site is that the plushes they create are based off AI generated images and that kind of statement is too specific to only use as a selling point.... right?? Well let me start with this:

So, yes, according to Leila Wang, creator of PlushThis (why no spaces?), everything is AI to physical. Grand. Don't get me wrong, that's a real skill thats being just wasted imo, but back on track. Here's the website for you to check it out yourself: https://plushthis.com/ also they use MidJourney according to this article from last year: https://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/503245/introducing-plushthis-worlds-first-ai-generated-plushies-brand-revolutionizing-stuffed-animal-design

Scamadvisor gives it a 90/100 but only gives one review as an example when most of the listings have reviews, which is odd. This part is literally just me putting on a tinfoil hat so take the bit with a grain of salt, but I think they're having their AI write their reviews. They're all very,,, bland? I don't know if anyone has played that website game called "Human or Not" but the reviews are giving AI. As an example, here's the listing for a dragon plush they have:

and then here's a comment under it

It's a strange mix up to have when it's very clearly white. Worth noting they also sell a green dragon plush.

Also, the rest of the comments tend to usually have a comment on how soft they are? And if not that then how high quality the fabric is. And they all have the same grammar with what I think the nail in the coffin being the fact not a single review has missed adding at least a period to the end of the last sentence. Yes, that level of proper grammar isn't uncommon,,,, but for every single review??? Yeah, I'm not buying it. All this added to the fact Scamadvisor only pulled one positive comment out this sea leads me to believe these aren't real reviews and are just HTML code or whatever tf.

Ok, whatever, site is faking reviews with AI and staged photos. Big whoop, just don't buy from them,,,, WELL this is all going back to how I'm not sure PlushThis is the real creator of that cat plush. Tbh what I think is happening is a mix of dropshipping and "orginal" plushes. Why?

This lil blurb states every first image listed is an AI generated image.

Let's look at this guy: https://plushthis.com/products/cute-rabbit-stuffed-animal?_pos=72&_sid=8df0505e5&_ss=r

There's only two images given and when I look him up in reverse image search:

Look at all those. PlushThis doesn't come up despite this image supposedly being AI.

This guy? https://plushthis.com/products/pink-black-racoon-stuffed-animal-toy?_pos=1&_sid=ffe901991&_ss=r

Yeah, only PlushThis matches.

So, what does this mean? I think it means that the cat more than likely IS a dropshipped item THAT THEY DIDNT CREATE??? Which is crazy because the blurb attached to it is one of the few times they mention in a listing that the stuffed animal started as an AI image. In fact, that blurb is what caused me to spiral down into this!! IT ALSO THROWS OUT MY PREVIOUS STATEMENTS ABOUT THE ETHICS OF ALL OF THIS!!! This isn't my only receipt as the cat that started this all is listed here: https://www.dscopilot.ai/products/1005006873166491

It states that the supplier is the whitebeard' store on aliexpress. Now, this could always be a ripoff of PlushThis' original creation but I doubt they're the original creators at this point. Since every creation's first image is AI, that either means they didn't share the AI image, their whole gimmick, or it wasn't designed by AI and thus couldn't provide a generated image. So, the next course of action was seeing if Taihua Toys Hong Kong Co, PlushThis' parent company, is related to any of the sellers on other sites and that's too tall of an order for me. That's a way bigger deep dive than I'm capable of in this moment, but if I ever do try and see if I can confirm my suspicions, I will reply to this. Hopefully soon since a lot of the sites listed when I reverse image searched the cat no longer have it for sale. Is it possibly a parent company trying to clean up the internet and make it less obvious the item is actually cheaply mass produced?? Who knows, not me.

#long post #dropshipping #scam #ai art discourse #ai art discussion #stuffed animals #stuffies #online shopping #PlushThis #I spent way too long on this post #No one is even gonna see this LMAO but hey if some youtube documentary comes out about these guys or their practices remember me #conspiracy theory #< that one just because this shit is not full proof and def needs a lot more resources and citations before I try to pass it off as legit #edit: TIL hyperlinks arent automatically added

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