Fashion, graphic designers say their work is being stolen, marketed with AI
Dozens of creators have sued online retailers, claiming copyright and trademark infringement
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This is the third part of InvestigateTV’s mAnIpulated series, examining the ways in which AI is impacting our everyday lives.
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Austin, TX (InvestigateTV) — Quick, trendy and cheap.
Those three words make up the basis of so-called “fast fashion.” These products are often available rapidly online, with items like dresses and tops selling for just a few bucks.
It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry that’s exploded over the last decade, and Chinese online retailers SHEIN and Temu are among the most dominant.
A 2024 survey found that one in five U.S. consumers polled shop on those platforms at least once a week, as thousands of new products are reportedly added to their websites every single day.
SHEIN, for example, explains its business model as one that can rapidly adapt to demand. Initially, it will create 100-200 pieces of any new product and then scale the future production based on interest and demand.
“This enables us to respond to increased demand or market changes with agility and speed – emerging trends can become SHEIN products quickly,” the company states on its website.
However, some independent designers and business owners say there’s a dark side to the deals, and they fear artificial intelligence is making it even worse.
‘It’s stealing, and it’s thievery’
Austin-based fashion designer Cassey Ho dreamed of being a fashion designer from the time she was a child.
“I grew up carrying a sketchbook with me everywhere, just like sketching,” Ho said. “I ended up making my Halloween costumes, my dance costumes, my friend’s prom dresses. It’s just something that I always wanted.”
Fast forward through the years, and Ho is the founder and head designer of both ‘Blogilates’ and ‘Popflex’ activewear. To market her products and explain her story, she often shares videos on her social media networks, aiming to show customers the long hours and careful crafting behind each product.
From concept to market, Ho says each piece she designs typically takes a year and a half to three years.
Now she says she’s in competition with fast fashion retailers who capitalize on her success and original designs. Those shops, she says, copy her designs and then produce pieces quickly and sell them for less than the materials she uses.
Take the “pirouette skort”. It’s an athletic design with a flouncy skirt that has pocketed shorts underneath. It quickly gained popularity online and, like all of her ideas, started simply in her sketchbook.
“I love ballerinas. I think they’re the epitome of grace and strength,” Ho said. “I wanted to create something that would make me feel really beautiful as I was working out or running.”
A labor of love, Cassey first unveiled the skort to customers in 2022. It sold out within days.
But in that popularity, she believes the fast fashion company SHEIN saw an opportunity to rip off the design she had painstakingly perfected.
“It’s stealing, and it’s thievery,” Ho said. “Because my designs are like my babies!”
Ho quickly called attention to her suspicions, posting a message to her more than 10 million subscribers on YouTube saying she believed SHEIN stole her pirouette design.
As her skort gained interest, she went through the lengthy and expensive process of getting a design patent for the skort.
Then in 2024, Taylor Swift appeared in videos wearing Ho’s original skort, and demand surged even higher.
At the same time, Ho said the number of knockoffs surged as well, offered at a fraction of her price for the original.
“It’s just exhausting,” Ho said. “What’s been wild is that even with the patent, there is no enforcement with the government to ensure that that patent isn’t violated.”
A new problem: AI manipulations
In addition to finding what she believes are copies of her designs being sold on multiple sites, Ho is now seeing another problem: Her photos and videos are being copied and sometimes manipulated, likely with AI.
Last year, Ho posted on her social media platforms and YouTube videos to explain what she found:
Amazon, one of the places where Ho said she’s seen knockoffs and her photos, responded to InvestigateTV’s questions about her designs. A spokesperson said, in part, “Amazon strictly prohibits counterfeit and IP infringing products in our store, as well as the use of copyrighted or manipulated content in product listings.”
The company specifically said it has addressed Ho’s situation: “Regarding Casey Ho’s brand, we have taken action based on the brand’s successful use of our reporting tools in Brand Registry.” The company’s full statement is at the end of this report.
Cassey Ho has not sued the retailers where she’s found what she believes are potentially patent-infringing products, but she said she has considered formal legal action.
InvestigateTV analyzed nearly a decade of court filings and found that other designers have sued for many issues, many for copyright and trademark infringement.
Lawsuits claim fast fashion websites profit from illegal copycats
In federal court filings available online, there are hundreds of lawsuits against fast fashion retailers and third-party marketplace websites alleging copyright, trademark and patent infringement.
For example, the company SHEIN, as well as its parent and affiliated companies, have been sued at least 100 times for claims that designs were copied, manufactured and sold. About half of those lawsuits were settled, and dozens more were dismissed after both the plaintiff and companies jointly agreed to stop the legal process.
In a lawsuit filed by a Houston designer against SHEIN, its owner and an affiliated company, this side-by-side image shows the designer’s artwork next to one of the products she claims was illegally made using her copyrighted work.
Several designers claimed the company frequently sells copies. One settled case involving a “Cowboy Cat” design called SHEIN “one of the biggest sources of infringing goods on the planet today” and claimed that it “relies in part on a coordinated scheme of pervasively infringing the copyrights of independent artists and businesses for financial gain.” The company denied those portrayals and claims in its answer filed in court.
In that case, the Houston designer of a copyrighted image of an orange cat wearing a cowboy hat and red bandana said that their design was used in 28 separate pieces sold by the companies, including pins, earrings and patches.
In court filings, SHEIN denied allegations with a number of defenses, including fair use, that there was no intent to harm the designer, and that if any copying of her work occurred, it wasn’t “sufficiently original” to warrant copyright protection.
That case was settled in January, according to court records.
Independent, small-scale designers and major brands are suing online sellers
Court filings contain dozens of side-by-side images that show alleged similarities between a designer’s original piece or graphic design compared to the alleged copycat version.
In lawsuits, designers show their original creations next to items they say were sold on SHEIN webpages. Some of the lawsuits are pending, others have settled, and some have been dismissed.
Plaintiffs range from small, independent designers to major brands like Oakley, Levi’s, and Polo Ralph Lauren. Fast fashion companies are even suing each other over copyright claims.
For example, SHEIN and Temu have both sued each other in the United States and the United Kingdom.
In June, a popular clothing brand called Brandy Melville sued SHEIN for copyright infringement, claiming the company stole their “innovative original product designs” and stated in the lawsuit, “IP theft is simply a cost of doing business for Shein.”
In photos submitted by Brandy Melville in court filings, side-by-side images show similar clothing with similar photo styles and setups. As of publication, SHEIN had not yet responded to the accusations in court.
In a June 2025 lawsuit, clothing retailer Brandy Melville claimed SHEIN copied their designs and sold them online.
Increasingly, some lawsuits point the finger at artificial intelligence being involved with copycatting.
One now-settled complaint accused Shein of using “AI based software that scours the Internet… to identify popular designs”, duplicating them and, in some cases, using AI tools to “intentionally conceal” an infringement.
Design dupes hit the print world
Outside Atlanta, Georgia, Dani Donovan is another creator who became a business owner and then said she quickly turned into a victim of design duplicates.
“It’s ridiculous how fast it is and how persistent they are,” Donovan said.
Donovan says her self-illustrated “Anti-Planner,” an activity book for people who struggle with procrastination or ADHD, was duped not long after it started getting attention on TikTok.
She even bought one of the fakes to see for herself. She said it was deeply discounted, poorly made and full of typos.
“I now have to pay like four $4‚000 a month to have a company literally take down fake listings, and they’ve taken down like 2,500 in under a year, which is nuts,” Donovan said.
She considers it an endless game of whac-a-mole, as she said similar-looking listings popped up on websites like Shein, Temu, and Amazon.
“I also think it’s incredibly likely that they have some sort of AI program that is automatically, you know, automatically making listings,” Donovan said.
InvestigateTV reached out to Temu and sent the company a suspected knockoff of Donovan’s “anti-planner” that we found listed on their website.
In response, the company said it launched an investigation and then took down the listing.
“Temu takes intellectual property protection seriously. Upon learning of the issue involving Dani Donovan, we promptly launched an investigation. The listing in question has been taken down, and the brand’s materials have been added to our IP protection database for ongoing monitoring.
“Temu operates as an online marketplace where independent third-party sellers list their own products. We require all sellers to comply with applicable IP laws and enforce our rules through proactive monitoring and prompt action on reports. Sellers who violate these rules may face removal of their listings, account suspensions, or permanent bans in cases of repeated or serious infringements. Temu also partners with industry associations such as the International Trademark Association (INTA) and the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition (IACC) to combat counterfeiting through cross-industry collaboration.
“We encourage rights holders to report suspected violations directly through our IP Protection Portal: https://www.temu.com/intellectual-property-complaint.html. We act quickly to address valid complaints.”
Law professor says companies might be ‘exploiting what they know’
Christine Haight Farley is an American University law professor who specializes in intellectual property law. She says artificial intelligence is certain to make this issue worse in the world of fast fashion.
“I think so much of these businesses thrive on cost-cutting methods and speed. Those are the two things in fast fashion. So if you can bring AI to bear on the problem, that will drive it even further,” Haight Farley said.
Aside from those newer concerns surrounding AI, she explains, there are long-standing challenges when it comes to design protection in the U.S. Further complicating things, what’s known as “dupe culture,” where consumers are more willing to buy lookalike, inexpensive versions of designer products.
“The dupe culture is something different from counterfeits. It’s not just you know, I want a $15 knockoff Louis Vuitton bag, but I want a bag that kind of captures the aesthetic. So it’s not copying the design exactly, but it’s copying the general idea of it,” Haight Farley said. “I think there are a number of companies that are becoming very savvy and maybe exploiting what they know about design protection.”
Haight Farley said part of the issue right now is that there are so many gray areas.
“There could be more work done to help individual designers get legal protection,” she said.
In the meantime, Farley says lawsuits are one avenue for potential accountability, though she adds, suing a major fast fashion retailer is often too expensive and time-consuming for a small business owner.
As for SHEIN, the company did not respond to our direct questions but sent a statement:
SHEIN third-party suppliers and Marketplace sellers are required to comply with company policy and certify their products do not infringe third-party IP. We continue to invest in and improve our processes and have a dedicated team to ensure both suppliers and sellers are adhering to our strict IP policies. SHEIN takes all claims of infringement seriously, and we take swift action when complaints are raised by valid IP rights holders.
When we shared SHEIN’s statement with her, Haight Farley said it sounded like the company was trying to shift the blame.
“It seems very much like the bad guy is someone else, the bad guy is these third parties,” she said.
That’s why she says the best recourse right now for people like Cassey Ho and Dani Donovan is to keep speaking up:
“We as consumers are feeding the monster,” Ho said. “My power is with my voice.”
Ho and Donovan both told us they’re considering legal action but have yet to make a final decision.
Full statement from Amazon’s spokesperson:
“Amazon strictly prohibits counterfeit and IP infringing products in our store, as well as the use of copyrighted or manipulated content in product listings. We have proactive measures in place to prevent counterfeit or infringing products from being listed, and our advanced technology continually scans our catalog for potential counterfeit, fraud, and abuse. If we identify an issue, we act quickly to protect customers and brands, including removing listings and blocking accounts as appropriate. There is a distinction between IP infringing products and alternatives to brand-name products, which do not violate a particular brand’s IP. Amazon’s wide selection includes alternatives to brand-name products, which exist across categories and retailers, and provide legitimate choices for our customers.”
Additional Reportable Information, Attributable to Company
- Brand Registry is a free service which gives brands the ability to grow with Amazon, while better protecting their brand and intellectual property rights. Through the Report a Violation tool in Brand Registry, brand owners can search for, identify, and report infringements and subsequently track their submissions within a dedicated dashboard.
- Regarding Casey Ho’s brand, we have taken action based on the brand’s successful use of our reporting tools in Brand Registry.
- We use advanced technology and expert human reviewers to verify the identities of potential sellers and analyze numerous data points, including behavior signals and connections to previously detected bad actors, to detect and prevent risks.
- You can learn more about our approach to brand protection in the 2024 Brand Protection Report.
Put Your Skills to the Test
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Watch more from the mAnIpulated: A mIsinformAtIon nAtIon Series
This is the second story of InvestigateTV’s mAnIpulated: A mIsinformAtIon nAtIon series.
- September 12, 2025: Fashion, graphic designers say their work is being stolen, marketed with AI
- September 5, 2025: AI scammers target sports fans with celebrity deepfakes
- August 25, 2025: AI or Real? How you can spot real content versus AI-manipulated fakes
Check the series homepage for updates with the latest reporting on AI-related topics from our local Gray Media stations throughout August and September.
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