Warwick Levy, a T-shirt designer based in Sydney and the founder of the label Lonely Kids Club, recently discovered that thousands of T-shirts featuring his original designs were being sold on the Chinese e-commerce platform Temu. The designs, which he collaborates with local artists to create, were copied and sold without permission, generating profits for unknown sellers. Levy described the situation as "brutal" and "gut-wrenching," noting that his creative work was being used to make money by others. According to Levy, the copied designs were likely created using an AI tool that scraped content from the Lonely Kids Club website. The website features 4,000 products, each with detailed descriptions, brand names, and photographs, which could have been used as source material for the AI. Levy reported the issue to Temu using a trademark claim, as the infringing listings used the brand name "Lonely Kids Club." However, he found the process of reporting the violations difficult, with issues like failed forms and unresponsive support emails. Eventually, most of the listings were removed, though he has since noticed some copycat T-shirts still appearing online. A spokesperson for Temu stated that the platform is used by independent sellers who are prohibited from listing products that infringe on intellectual property rights. The company confirmed that it removed the listings after receiving reports from Lonely Kids Club and added the brand’s works to its IP Protection database for ongoing monitoring. Sellers found violating these policies may face actions such as listing removal, account suspensions, or permanent bans. Levy has raised concerns about proposed government reforms that would allow AI companies to legally scrape online content in Australia, calling such measures "devastating" for creators. He emphasized that his T-shirt designs were not created using generative AI and urged Temu to enforce stricter standards for its sellers. Meanwhile, the Australian government, led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, is considering granting AI companies legal rights to use online content to train AI models, a move that has sparked concerns among artists and small brands about the potential for their work to be replicated by large online retailers.