I didn’t think this really needed to be a post. Among reasonable designers, I’m sure it would be understood that a computer cannot recreate what a human brain creates when it comes to crochet and knit patterns.

This is not an anti-AI rant. I’ve used AI. So have you. Every time we use any search engine, it’s running through AI first. When I had some yarn donated to me that had mouse “residue” in it, I certainly asked AI how much I needed to worry about Hanta virus in that yarn. I’ve used AI to help me write emails. I’m not using it for this post, though.

Recently, I got an email from someone asking for my help with patterns. This person actually said “I’ve created several crochet designs…but I have no personal crochet experience and cannot confidently write the pattern instructions.” Um, what? My response email asked ‘how can you create crochet designs and not have crochet experience?’ The answer was that she’s putting ideas into AI apps like YARNIBY and CHATGPT.

What?… I mean… what?

So, I decided to check out yarniby. Sure, it hypes itself as an app that will create designs for you. So, I gave it a test. I gave it this image of one of my headscarves.

You want to know what the app returned to me? A 3-color snood. A SNOOD. It gave me a pattern of an item worked in the round that creates a net to hold all of your hair.

So, what can AI do? Clearly, AI can scour the internet and compile a relatively accurate set of instructions to make something. Is it going to be the same as the photo you submitted? Questionable.

This wasn’t the only test I gave to yarniby. I also showed it a wrister that I knitted and it identified it as not crochet. OK, good. So, then I showed it my crochet version of the same wrister and it said again that it was identified as not crochet. WRONG!

Next, I showed it an image of the mega-St. Faustina that I made for our church bazaar. This pattern is from https://lindseycrochets.substack.com/ So, it would be stealing if I used the result as my own pattern.

However, again, the AI returned to me an amigurumi pattern but it was NOT the amigurumi pattern that I used to create this item! This item is worked bottom-up, but the app gave me a top-down pattern. Also, it said to use worsted weight yarn and a 2.75-3.5mm hook. WRONG again. Yes, I used worsted weight but I tripled the strands! Bulky weight! Definitely not using a 3.5mm hook is going to make this doll!

After that, I’d hit my limit for the month using the free version of the app. Plus, I was personally and professionally disgusted.

So, look, if you have absolutely no clue where to start when writing a pattern, maybe, just maybe, you could ask AI how to get started. But DON’T use whatever it gives you AS your finished pattern!

First of all, if you want to create crochet patterns and you don’t know HOW TO crochet at all, maybe you need to find some other avenue of income. The crochet industry is already dealing with crochet items being commercially sold for pennies on the hour of time creating the piece. We don’t need a whole host of AI-written patterns being sold by people who don’t even know how to crochet the very same pattern they’re trying to sell! Are you kidding me?

Use AI as a search engine. Use AI to help you generate ideas. Use AI to help you organize your thoughts.

But please, pretty please, with icing and cookies on top, DON’T, for the love of the craft, don’t use AI to write your pattern.

If you need help writing patterns, I have a whole host of blog posts and ebooks available for you. There are a great many other designers and tech editors who will also give you advice on how to write a crochet pattern. But you must write it yourself.