How to spot AI art.
Six checks, in the order that settles a listing fastest.
- A named artist and a named medium. “Oil on linen, 60 × 80 cm” is checkable. “Digital art” or no medium at all: ask, or move on.
- A body of work. Years of consistent paintings, exhibitions, a studio. Forty images uploaded in one month is the pattern of generation.
- The mockup room. Every piece on the same digital easel, beside the same plant, in the same sunlit room: the art exists only as a file.
- Hands, text, eyes, edges. Generators still fail on lettering, fingers, symmetrical eyes and the places where objects meet: halos, doubled outlines, petals that merge into each other.
- Reverse image search. The same image on ten print-on-demand sites under different names is a template, not a painting.
- Ask. What was it painted on, when, and where is the original now. A painter answers in a line. A reseller of files stalls.
Where the sites stand
| Site | AI-generated work |
|---|---|
| Artfinder | Banned outright, including AI as a base |
| Of Nature and Art | Banned, including AI assistance at any stage |
| Saatchi Art | No solely-AI work; AI tools allowed in a work's preliminary stages |
| Etsy | Allowed with disclosure, listed as designed by the seller |
| Fine Art America | Allowed, sold in its own categories |
Policies checked on each site’s own pages, July and August 2026.
Here
Every work is a painting by a named artist in a stated medium, documented in museum and archive records or vouched for by a body of work. Nothing generated, nothing AI-assisted, at any stage. The rule in full.
Questions
Does Etsy allow AI-generated art?
Yes, when the seller discloses it; the listing says designed by rather than made by the seller. The disclosure sits inside the listing, so read it.
Is AI art always labelled?
No. Artfinder bans it, Etsy and Fine Art America require labels, Saatchi Art allows AI tools in early stages without a label on the final work. Elsewhere, assume nothing.
What if a listing says hand-painted but ships a print?
A print of a painting is fine if it says so. Ask what the original was painted on and where it is. A painter answers in one line.
Botanical art printsBird and wildlife art printsNo AI art, our ruleCompared with EtsyAll guides