Small Mart, a Friday market for artists and makers at the Davis Square Plaza in Somerville, Massachusetts, has banned AI-generated goods and flyers, Cambridge Day reports. It announced the rule in a video on 1 September, and its vendor application now states that it does not accept mass-produced goods or AI-generated imagery.
Co-owner Wiley, who gave no surname, said the market is for artists and artisans and that AI isn't art, adding that most generative AI was trained on people's work without credit. The policy followed vendor complaints about a long-time seller who offered some AI-made items; that seller stayed and dropped them. Wiley, who also owns High Energy Vintage, said AI art full of mistakes should not sit beside real work. Wiley and co-owner Bridget Duggan had already been quietly rejecting applicants with AI designs.
Sellers told the paper they approve. Painter and button maker Carly Holbrook, who began selling there in August, said the ban protects a space for showing art, and that AI is cluttering the web and cheapening art by copying it, though as a small seller she has not lost business to it. Shannon Donahue of Wild Planet now collages her own flyers as a reply to the AI slop posters she sees around Somerville. Isaac Smolund of Malden pop-up Nebula Books said AI pushes everything toward a bland corporate look, and he and co-owner Jess Sanford said they would stop selling at any market that allowed AI art.
Pete Moulthrop, who has made Small Mart's flyers since 2022, said some clients came back after AI flyers proved inaccurate, though he has lost others to the technology.
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