I don\u2019t know why I was so surprised when I first discovered the existence of wedding dress slop. As A.I.\u2019s popularity with everyday consumers has grown over the past few years, it\u2019s taken hold in seemingly every medium: articles, videos, music<\/a>, books<\/a>. Even knitters are having to learn to separate real patterns from the A.I.-generated ones. Of course wedding dresses aren\u2019t immune.<\/p>\n Except. I shop for clothes online all the time and I don\u2019t encounter, like, Madewell slop. But the thing about buying a wedding dress is that most of the people doing it have never done it before. We don\u2019t have a way of distinguishing the stuff that\u2019s strange because the bridal industry tends to be old-fashioned and a little quirky from the stuff that\u2019s strange because it\u2019s a scam. \u201cThis is just such a weird journey for the bride,\u201d said Wallace Wilson, the vice president of marketing technology at Essense of Australia, a wedding gown company based not in Australia but Kansas City. \u201cYou\u2019ve never searched for this before. You\u2019ve never shopped for this before.\u201d That lack of knowledge is what leaves space for the slop to get in.<\/p>\n Moderators on one popular wedding dress subreddit have gotten so fed up with A.I. that they banned it altogether: No A.I. inspo or using A.I. to digitally try on dresses is allowed there. The subreddit takes a hard line against A.I. because \u201cit sets unrealistic expectations of what the dress will look like,\u201d a moderator who wanted to remain anonymous told me. \u201cIt ignores physics and patternmaking principles. Are they beautiful? Sure, but they won\u2019t look that way in real life, and it\u2019s setting brides up for disappointment.\u201d She said that the rule gets broken often; the moderators end up closing two or three threads a day for their A.I. usage.<\/p>\n The problem is not confined to the internet, either. \u201cIt\u2019s becoming more and more of a topic these days between bridal store owners and designers and whatnot,\u201d said Krista Lastrina, the owner of Lastrina Girls<\/a>, a bridal salon in Middletown, Connecticut. \u201cI have a great team of consultants here, and all of us are pretty frustrated when people come in and they say, \u2018Oh, I was trying to find a dress like this, but I wanted to do a certain kind of sleeve on it.\u2019 So they will have A.I. put that sleeve on it. It\u2019s physically not possible to put that type of a sleeve on, say, a strapless dress, right? What\u2019s it going to come off of? Like, that doesn\u2019t exist. And if it were to exist, it would literally fall off your body, because it\u2019s got nothing to hang on to.\u201d She\u2019s noticed a marked increase in visitors to her shop referring to A.I. over the past year, estimating that maybe 10 percent of the brides she serves now mention it.<\/p>\n Some A.I. dresses are more fanciful than others. Though Maddy declined to order that red Etsy dress she loved after determining that it wasn\u2019t real, there was nothing about it, no logic-defying sleeves or ruffles, that precluded it being re-created in real life\u2014she told me that she asked around among tailors who did custom work, and they thought building a similar dress would be doable. She ultimately decided against it though\u2014it was too expensive.<\/p>\n \n Like it or not, A.I. is starting to replace Photoshop, to say nothing of the even more antiquated technology that is human imagination.\n<\/p>\n If brides, most of whom are presumably in their 20s and 30s, are falling for A.I., this would seem to go against the stereotypes that older people are the ones most susceptible to being<\/a> tricked by it. \u201cIt\u2019s really surprising!\u201d the subreddit moderator said when I asked what she made of this discrepancy. \u201cThis may be a little harsh of me as a millennial, but the media\/digital literacy of the younger folks, mid-to-young Gen Z, is just as bad as the boomers.\u201d Lastrina, however, thought that maybe it isn\u2019t that Gen Z is bad at detecting A.I., it\u2019s that they don\u2019t have any shame about using it. \u201cYou have these young brides who probably can spot that it\u2019s A.I., but they just don\u2019t care, because they want what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n Wilson told me he recently gave a presentation about A.I. at a wedding industry event where he encouraged an audience of skeptical bridal shop owners to see the potential benefits of the technology. \u201cWhen [brides] bring that image into the store, it\u2019s very different than some nefarious company doing this A.I. stuff to mislead a bride,\u201d he said. Brides are simply trying to envision what a dress might look like on them on their big day. Like it or not, A.I. is starting to replace Photoshop, to say nothing of the even more antiquated technology that is human imagination, as a method for doing so.<\/p>\n Taylor Ann Art\u2019s design, left; A.I. image, right. Let\u2019s get into the nefarious companies, though, the ones that steal dress designs and more than likely conjure up suspicious new retailers from whole cloth. No one knows this better than Taylor Ann Art, the Kansas City\u2013based proprietor of Canvas Bridal<\/a>, which transforms discontinued dress samples into one-of-a-kind painted gowns. \u201cThere\u2019s pictures right now of my work online being sold that it\u2019s so clear to me, that I can see that\u2019s my dress they\u2019ve run through an A.I. and put a person in it,\u201d she told me. She shared some examples with me of photos of her dresses and the online listings that had clearly been adapted from her originals. Ann Art\u2019s work is colorful and vibrant and, unluckily for her, apparently particularly attractive to A.I. and scammers. \u201cIt just so happens to be that A.I. also really likes ombre, so it\u2019s created a lot of tension,\u201d she said. People have started asking whether her dresses are A.I.\u2013generated when she posts them online, she told me. She finds it galling to be in the position of having to prove that A.I. copied her and not the other way around.<\/p>\n Stolen images have been a problem on the internet for as long as there\u2019s been an internet, but according to Taylor Ann Art, A.I. has exacerbated the issue to an unmanageable degree. Before, when her work got stolen and wound up on scam websites, she could report it, whether to Pinterest or the sites\u2019 web providers. She would identify herself as the copyright holder, and usually within 24 hours, it would get taken down. Once a month, she would take a day to mass-report all the copycats, and that was enough to keep on top of the problem.\u00a0\u201cBut now there\u2019s this gray area where, even though I can clearly tell that that\u2019s my image through A.I., they\u2019re \u2018different\u2019 images, so they\u2019re allowed to sell it, and I can\u2019t get them taken down,\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n Wilson, of Essense of Australia, described a similar experience. \u201cOur team is constantly running searches, nonstop, with A.I. tools, with [search engine optimization] tools, with everything, just looking for mentions of our brand out there for us to find to ask to take down. But to be honest, there\u2019s got to be hundreds of sites and hundreds of images and hundreds of things out there that we\u2019re not even catching.\u201d<\/p>\n Danielle Frankel\u2019s design, left. The Ballbella version, right. Though there\u2019s sometimes a thin line between inspiration and theft, some examples are particularly egregious: Here, a site called Ballbella<\/a> has clearly doctored, likely via A.I., Danielle Frankel\u2019s Scarlet dress<\/a>, which retails for $10,990, onto a different woman and different background. Only $229! It\u2019s the exact same price the interestingly named Whengirl is charging<\/a> for what is unmistakably a Dreamers & Lovers Hayley dress<\/a> (originally $2,900), whose original accompanying photo, of a blond woman, has been replaced by a brunette who is somehow standing and lifting her arms in the exact same unlikely position. When girl, indeed, but also how, why, and who, girl?<\/p>\n Little is known about the strange category of shady-seeming sites that sell super-cheap wedding dresses, many of which claim to be fully customizable. Good Morning America did a big story on them in 2015<\/a>, so they\u2019ve been around a while, but they\u2019ve also continued to evolve. \u201cIt\u2019s taking advantage of a bride looking for a good deal and just scamming them out of money [with] a low-quality dress they\u2019re disappointed by,\u201d the wedding dress subreddit moderator told me, adding that she believes they\u2019re usually made in sweatshops or by unethical businesses that don\u2019t pay fair labor wages. Jeremy Hong, who owns DiscountDressShop.com<\/a>, told me he\u2019s maintained a list of scam dress websites<\/a> and red flags to look for on his site since 2008. That\u2019s really all he can do. He\u2019s seen some get shut down and many more spring up.<\/p>\n Hong said these sites are generally thought to come out of China. (They sometimes list fake addresses; I came across one that listed its address as the site of the Whole Foods in Gowanus<\/a>, Brooklyn, in New York.) Many of them also sell cheap, low-quality prom dresses to unsuspecting teenagers, a scam that local news has been warning the masses about<\/a> every spring for over a decade. Even on the scam scale, some are more legit than others. Some will take your money and send you nothing, while others will deliver an actual product, though rarely a quality one. Some have names that themselves seem A.I.-generated, akin to the now-widespread practice of Amazon pseudo-brands using collections of unpronounceable letters <\/a>as their names.<\/p>\n I usually found my way to the wedding dress slop via Pinterest, whose algorithm ensures that if you click on a dress you like, dozens of similar ones will populate your screen. This is what makes it the best place on the internet to look for dress inspo\u2014and the worst, because I suspect it\u2019s also the main way all the links to scam dresses proliferate across the web. \u201cPinterest has been a cesspool for A.I.<\/a> dresses because anyone can upload and re-pin inspiration pictures,\u201d the subreddit moderator told me. She believes the site should be screening links for legitimacy and requiring retailers to post realistic images of their products that don\u2019t use A.I. Wilson was a little more forgiving: If people find a stolen or A.I.-embellished image that they like and want to save, why should it be Pinterest\u2019s responsibility to deny them?<\/p>\n Personally, I lost hours to Pinterest during my dress search. I can\u2019t emphasize enough how different this aspect of wedding dress shopping is from the transcendent, ecstatic experience that exists in the popular imagination and in media like Say Yes to the Dress. Every dress I clicked on generated 10 more I should probably click on too, just in case one of them was the one, then each of those 10 would lead to another 10, and so on. It was like I was trapped in a math problem designed to teach exponents to fifth graders. You\u2019re supposed to cry when you find your dream dress; if looking for dresses on Pinterest ever brought me to tears, it was because there was always another one to click on. As with dating<\/a>, it turns out there are drawbacks to infinite choice. Perhaps not from Pinterest\u2019s perspective, though\u2014it\u2019s in the app\u2019s interest to keep you engaged, and the more dresses it has for you to look through, the longer you\u2019ll stay. For Pinterest, A.I. means more images and more clicks, even if it means more garbage for users like me to sort through. (The site has options for users to limit the amount of A.I.<\/a> they encounter; I attempted to exclude it and still saw a ton.)<\/p>\n Wilson told me that a strange aspect of the scammy sites that many Pinterest links lead to is that a number of them aren\u2019t necessarily trying to make a quick buck on cheap dresses. Their scam may actually center on SEO or Amazon affiliate links. The bridal industry is \u201cjust another market for them to spin up these garbage sites,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Though I considered ordering an A.I. wedding dress from one or more such sites for this article, I ultimately decided I didn\u2019t want to give any of these sites a dime, or my credit card number. If you followed the recent saga of Courtney, the woman who bought 13 wedding dresses<\/a> on TikTok, you may recall that she actually bought a 14th dress that she forgot to count. That dress was A.I., and she knew it was A.I., but she ordered it anyway. \u201cIt was $59. In my weary state I thought to myself\u2026 what if\u2026\u201d she wrote on TikTok<\/a>. No dress ever arrived. Interestingly, the particular dress she ordered, a romantic number with a skirt that seems impossible because it is, circulates constantly online and has ensnared many people. Last year, a wedding dress subreddit singled it out<\/a> and begged people to stop posting it. Courtney apparently never got the memo. (Some of Courtney\u2019s other dresses came from places that resemble some of the dubious outlets I\u2019ve discussed in this piece, and she actually liked a bunch of them, so you never know.)<\/p>\n \n The overall effect is just cheap-looking, about as well-constructed as a Party City Halloween\u00a0costume.\n<\/p>\n But some A.I. dresses do actually materialize when you order them \u2026 sort of. This recent video from YouTuber Safiya Nygaard<\/a> is about A.I. dresses in general, not wedding dresses specifically, but it provides a good illustration of the difference between online listings and what might actually arrive: One purple gown\u2019s applique flowers look nothing like the ones in the picture (and quickly start to fall off), the dramatic basque waist is much less so in person, and its skirt isn\u2019t nearly as voluminous as advertised. The overall effect is just cheap-looking, about as well-constructed as a Party City Halloween costume.<\/p>\n A.I. image, left; Taylor Ann Art\u2019s design, right. As platforms like Pinterest have embraced A.I.\u2014and become overrun with it\u2014the visibility of non-A.I. work has suffered. \u201cI used to get 2 million views on Pinterest per month, and now it\u2019s down to 100,000,\u201d Taylor Ann Art told me. Sales have slowed too. \u201cI used to sell instantly, quickly, randomly. I\u2019ve been in business 10 years, and this last year, I\u2019ve only been able to make sales of dresses if I\u2019ve communicated with a customer beforehand, or if they\u2019ve come in person to try on a dress.\u201d Essentially, she now has to prove to people that she\u2019s human to make a sale.<\/p>\n She\u2019s hoping to combat the A.I. onslaught with a pivot. \u201cI\u2019m trying to open up a space where brides can come in person and try on. I\u2019m trying to push the more real aspect, and I\u2019m hoping that\u2019ll save my business.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A Hit New Show Is the Ideal Watch for Jane Austen Fans Emphasizing the in-store experience is what Wilson recommends too. He knows bridal shops are old-fashioned\u2014he recalled that some of them didn\u2019t even have computers when he started at Essense of Australia 14 years ago. And he knows that Gen Z is used to instant gratification. He said his 23-year-old daughter recently told him that she wouldn\u2019t want to visit a bridal boutique if she were looking for a wedding dress. \u201cShe just would buy three wedding dresses online, have them all come in, \u2018I\u2019d try on the one, and then I\u2019d send the other ones back,\u2019 \u201d he told me. He understands that getting these young brides to value the in-store experience when the time comes will be a challenge. While I understand that many future brides will seek out the bridal equivalent of the fast fashion they\u2019ve grown accustomed to, I also have faith that some will appreciate the old way. Or, as columnist Ezra Klein recently argued<\/a> in the New York Times, \u201cThe more automation there is, the more people value a human\u2019s touch.\u201d That\u2019s where I eventually landed with my own wedding dress search.<\/p>\n After clicking through hundreds, maybe thousands of dresses online, some real and some fake, I ended up buying my wedding dress from a traditional bridal shop. I remember thinking the process felt a little stuffy and formal, like bridal shops were all conspiring with each other to pretend like it\u2019s still 1996. Now I recognize what a luxury that was. Would you rather drown in a sea of wedding dress slop or spend an afternoon sipping champagne and traveling back in time? As interesting as it\u2019s been to sift through all the slop, I know my answer. Pass me a flute, please.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1204aace-bccf-4ccc-9a8f-eafdc1a6702c.jpeg\")
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\nPhotos from Canvas Bridal and generated by A.I.<\/p>\n![\"two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/e67eec11-9c17-40a8-be71-7827551317b1.png\")
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\nDanille Frankel, Ballbella.<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/aecede3e-b623-48ea-904a-5ed0a028e2dd.jpeg\")
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\nPhotos from Frisco Dresses and Taylor Ann Art\/Canvas Bridal.<\/p>\n
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