Our approach to AI-generated products at Intention Boutique

Intention Boutique was built around a pretty simple idea: there should still be places online where you can find things made, designed, chosen, grown, blended, written, crafted, and dreamed up by actual people.

Technology has its place. We use it too. But there’s a difference between using a tool and replacing the person behind the work. That distinction matters here.

We don’t allow AI-generated products

We don’t accept products whose artwork, design, writing, imagery, or other creative content was generated by AI and is being sold as the finished product.

That includes AI-generated art prints, designs put onto merchandise, downloadable artwork, books or journals made primarily from generated content, and similar products where the machine is doing the creative work.

The internet probably has enough instant moon-phase posters already. What we want here is the person behind the thing.

That might be an artist creating from scratch, a maker working with their hands, or a small business owner sourcing unusual pieces, blending products, building collections, or bringing their own eye and point of view to what they sell.

If that sounds like your kind of business, you can learn more about selling with Intention Boutique.

Not everything at Intention Boutique is handmade, but there should be a human somewhere in the story.

What about using AI as a tool?

We’re realistic. Small businesses use technology, and AI isn’t disappearing tomorrow.

Limited use behind the scenes is okay — something like cleaning up a product background, for example — as long as AI isn’t creating the actual product or creative work being sold.

But permission isn’t the same thing as encouragement.

We’d rather see people use these tools thoughtfully instead of reaching for them automatically. Ask whether you actually need them. Look into what sits behind them. Pay attention to the conversations happening around energy and water use, data centers, creative work used for training, compensation, and what happens when “fast and cheap” starts replacing people by default.

You don’t have to throw your computer into the woods, w just think using technology intentionally should include knowing a little about what it costs.

That feels pretty on-brand for a marketplace built around intentional choices.

Why we care

There’s already an enormous amount of stuff on the internet, we don’t need to make it easier to produce more of the same.

We’d much rather help you stumble across a wildly oversized pair of earrings, a crystal someone picked because the inclusions were incredible, a strange little piece of art, a handmade candle, a ritual tool, a vintage find, or something you didn’t even know you wanted until you saw it.

The point of Intention Boutique isn’t to create another endless wall of interchangeable products. It’s to make room for personality. For weird ideas. For beautiful things, useful things, magical things, and the small businesses behind them.