Etsy began enforcing a generative AI disclosure requirement on 14 January 2026. If you used AI to create a listing image, description, mockup or design, you must say so in the listing and change your attribution from "Made by" to "Designed by".
What counts as AI use
Broader than most sellers assume. Reporting on Etsy's Q1 2026 enforcement indicates listings were removed for all of the following:
- Images generated with Midjourney, DALL-E or ChatGPT image tools, even where the seller supplied the concept.
- Photos edited with AI features that did more than a clean background swap, such as generative fill or replaced surfaces.
- Descriptions written by a language model without disclosure.
- Text-prompt mockups for shirts, mugs and typography.
- SVGs, patterns and digital downloads built from AI-generated designs.
Template tools that assemble text from wording you supply are a different thing from generative AI. If you are unsure which category a tool falls into, disclose. The cost of over-disclosing is nothing.
Why this is urgent
One marketplace analysis found roughly 68 percent of active shops had not touched the new disclosure field within the first 30 days. Etsy's bulk edit tools do not apply it retroactively, and sellers who batch-uploaded listings before the policy went live were never prompted. Reported Q1 figures put removals near 12,000 listings with around 8,500 warnings, and many of those sellers did not know the rule existed.
Enforcement is invisible until it is not. Listings missing the disclosure can be filtered from search results, which looks exactly like a ranking slump rather than a policy problem.
What to do this week
Audit your listings. Anything where AI shaped the final output needs the disclosure field completed and a plain line in the description.
Fix your attribution. Move from "Made by" to "Designed by" where AI was involved.
Keep the wording factual. A short sentence, not an apologetic paragraph. Over-explaining hurts conversion without improving compliance.
Check your production partner disclosure if you use print on demand. That is a separate requirement and it catches POD sellers regularly.
The originality rule underneath it
Etsy's Creativity Standards require items to be based on your own original design. Purchased design bundles and pre-made templates are a problem even when the commercial licence looks fine. Etsy allows AI-assisted art where you provided the creative direction. Running someone else's prompts through an image model does not qualify.
While you are in there
If you are rewriting listings anyway, it is a good moment to fix the titles and tags at the same time. Our Listing Optimizer checks length, keyword placement and repetition, and our guide to Etsy titles and tags covers what actually moves rank.
Verify anything here against Etsy's own policy pages before acting. Platform rules move quickly, and this one has already been revised more than once.