Said It Here

How to find real artist prints instead of AI art

Platforms like Etsy are flooded with AI-generated images that lack filters to separate them from genuine artwork, making it frustratingly hard to support real creators. This clutter buries credible artist shops and drives buyers away from the marketplace altogether.

What people tried

Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.

  1. 1
    Printing artwork yourself to place in a binder.
  2. 2
    Switching to alternative platforms like Facebook profiles for sales
  3. 3
    Buying directly from artists' personal websites instead of marketplaces
  4. 4
    Asking for direct community recommendations to bypass search

In their words

Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.

r/Etsy3 people · September 2026

“Recently, I’ve become frustrated at the platform because AI slop has flooded my feed, making it hard to find credible shops with real art.”source ↗

“Since I’ve found there’s no way to filter out AI-generated imagery, I’ve almost completely given up on Etsy.”source ↗

anonymous36726 · r/Etsy · 6 upvotes

“The problem is, a lot of them look ai generated, I want to support real artists.”source ↗

Prestigioustofu0271 · r/Etsy · 1 upvotes

“Seller here (also VERY fed up with all the ai slop shops 😭).”source ↗

cnfdgju · r/Etsy · 1 upvotes

Where this came up

People with this problem also raised