AI trash beginner books pollute the lace ecosystem

Sam Cole at 404Media covers the AI beginner book problem

When scrolling though my regular lace sites—made by real people in lace—I came across a scathing post by Marilee Rockley about AI (artificial intelligence) and pattern theft books: My original patterns are not AI . Testify—I have used her patterns and they are terrific.

She highlighted a video by Karen Bovard-Sayre, who had examined a tatting book for sale on a Big Book site.

AI tatting books are a scourge for newbies and hurt active designers

Remembering my recent search for a book requested by a member of my lace group, I became irked enough to seek out a journalist to explain what we are seeing. Today, Samantha Cole delivered a terrific overview of the problem at 404Media: AI Comes for a Centuries-Old Craft.

One of the points I made to Sam became even more important this week:

“One other thing that I do is to edit Wikipedia with good books as references when I hear about them—maybe that could become another route to connect people to higher quality and current materials.”

This is another reason the project is valuable—saving people money from terrible trash books. After I posted on Bluesky, someone said they had been given a trash crochet book from a well-meaning outsider to crochet. Let’s get ahead of this.

I should probably add my current favorite recommendation for a beginner book: the descriptions are incredibly detailed and the photos are terrific in Jan Tregidgo’s “Torchon Lacemaking: A Step-by-Step Guide.” Other recommended (by real lacemakers, not AI) beginner books include: Lessons is Bobbin Lace Making by Southard; Discovering Torchon by Ulricke Löhr; The Torchon Lace Workbook by Bridget Cook. You can find a lot of books reviewed by a real person on The Lace Bee Book Blog.