Hello Reader,

We need to talk about A.I. for just a minute!

I’ve seen this huge movement from artists who are fed up with Meta for not allowing them to opt out of allowing A.I training bots from scanning their images on Instagram. These artists are moving off Instagram onto a newly created platform called Cara. An app created by and for artists.

I have gone ahead and set up my profile and you can follow me there (I will follow everyone back).

I’m not ready to jump ship from Instagram however. I’ve spent years building up a loyal and wonderful community there and I really don’t have the energy or time to start again.

Yes, Instagram needs to do better, but the A.I training bots are scanning everywhere, including your website, your Spoonflower shop, your Etsy shop and probably your art agency website. So moving off of Instagram, in my opinion, is not going to stop your artwork from the training bots.

Cara on the other hand does look great, but it’s still in beta and so has a lot of bugs. It took me multiple attempts to just create one post. You can’t schedule them either. I use a tool called Metricool which allows me to schedule and plan posts on YouTube shorts, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok well ahead of time freeing up much-needed room for actually creating art and looking after my amazing little community. I don't want to spend my days posting to individual platforms.

My other concern is who is on Cara? Is it just artists or are there art directors, makers, interior designers, small business owners, fabric companies and anyone else who would typically reach out to me on Social Media for collaborations and licenses? Instagram has been a huge source of clients for me and I’m worried I’ll lose that on Cara, but I could be wrong!

On the upside, I’m hoping this movement will highlight to Meta (Instagram/Facebook) that it needs to do better.

The conversation happening between artists and AI companies and regulators around the world is positive.

• Getty Images are seeking huge punitive damages for AI crawling on their sites
• AI-generated work can’t by law carry any copyright, say the US and UK courts.
• Most publishers now state in contracts that an artist can’t submit work that has been generated through AI.

Yay! All moves in the right direction.

Anyway, let me know if you’re on Cara so I can follow you. It really will be interesting to see where this will go. But Instagram will still be my main posting platform for now.

If you want a completely private place to share your art and patterns and connect with other surface pattern designers in a supportive community space, I encourage you to hang out in the Learn with Mel Community where I hold monthly Q&A’s, challenges, weekly tutorials/resources and much much more.

I’d love your thoughts on this, so please reply and let me know what you think.

All the best,

Mel