Who owns India’s textile traditions in age of AI-enabled mass production?

Bitupan Deka was retired buying for a “gamusa” (traditional scarf) with his parent successful India’s northeastern authorities of Meghalaya erstwhile helium noticed thing unusual.

“Every store selling the scarf had the aforesaid fistful of patterns repeated implicit and over,” helium told Al Jazeera implicit the telephone from Shillong, the superior of Meghalaya.

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“When I asked around, I recovered that weavers successful Sualkuchi [district successful neighbouring Assam state] are paid a one-time interest of astir 2,000 rupees [$21] for each plan they develop, alternatively of royalties. Cutting down the fig of designs they nutrient was a cost-saving signifier followed by the manufacturers.”

Bitupan Deka [Courtesy of Bitupan Deka]

This find prompted Deka, an adjunct prof of machine exertion astatine Shillong’s MIT University, to make a strategy that tin nutrient infinite caller designs for specified fabrics.

“My enactment isn’t meant to regenerate the accepted designers. I hope, instead, that it volition go a instrumentality successful their hands to make caller and modern motifs much easily, truthful the consumers tin person variety,” Deka said.

Once the patent, which is being applied for nether the probe and improvement section of his university, comes through, Deka plans to monetise the strategy by making it a commercialized designing work that the textile manufacture tin avail.

In India’s varied textile traditions, patterns and motifs transportation the representation of a spot and the mythology of its radical – sometimes adjacent the past of migrations.

The designs are imagined by weavers from things that beryllium astir them, and past painted with locally disposable colours, mostly utilizing carved clay and woody frames. These weavers bash not simply reproduce a pattern; they inherit it. Their hands hesitate wherever their grandmother’s did, and they cognize wherefore a peculiar angiosperm indispensable look left.

A machine has nary specified inheritance oregon hesitation. It learns by analysing pictures and repeating them successful endless variations. And yet, arsenic Deka’s strategy shows, the machine tin present gully and weave the aforesaid flower.

The Rekh Sanganeri Dataset is simply a akin strategy developed for hand-block printed Sanganeri textiles from the occidental Indian authorities of Rajasthan. It includes high-resolution images of printed patterns, annotated down to ink bleed and flimsy misalignment – the imperfections that are the hallmark of the handmade work.

Its developer, Reddy Sai Nivas C, says it should beryllium utilized arsenic a assets for probe and art, not arsenic a substitute for artisans.

But the disclaimer is the paradox: Tools built to sphere a trade are making its ocular connection easier to digitally reproduce without involving the craftsperson.

Dinesh Chhipa comes from 1 of the oldest Chhipa families, an artisan and merchant caste renowned for dyeing and artifact printing. He is simply a Bagru decorator – a artifact printing method from Bagru municipality successful the occidental authorities of Rajasthan – and a textile businessman.

“Traditional trade is dilatory to produce. Even if idiosyncratic offered america a fortune, we wouldn’t beryllium capable to nutrient these pieces successful wide numbers, truthful I don’t responsibility those utilizing integer exertion and AI to capable the gap,” helium told Al Jazeera.

“But don’t get trade and determination names similar Bagru and Jaipuri [named aft the superior metropolis of Rajasthan]. These designs and motifs were calved retired of a civilization and necessities of the communities they travel from.”

Dinesh Chhipa is simply a Rajasthan-based artisan and merchant [Courtesy of Burgoyne Original Masters]

Who owns civilization erstwhile it turns into plain data?

India has been digitising its textile representation for years – from the Botanical Survey of India’s humanities collections to the Bharatiya Vastra Shilpa Kosh, a nationalist portal built by the state-run National Institute of Fashion Technology and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

Without documentation, the fragile traditions and cognition could disappear. But digitisation besides allows the aforesaid archive to beryllium utilized by an AI strategy seeking to reproduce these crafts astatine scale.

At the India AI Impact Summit successful New Delhi successful February this year, Indian bundle institution Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) showcased Bridgital Loom, an AI strategy that converts textile designs into loom-ready instructions. LED lights connected the loom usher a weaver done the thread sequences of intricate Banarasi and Kanchipuram patterns – named aft the cities wherever these iconic arts grew.

TCS says the exertion helps weavers execute analyzable designs faster and with less errors, and is meant to beryllium a span betwixt the artisans and technology. A aviator task that uses the loom is already nether mode astatine Kanchipuram, a municipality successful confederate Tamil Nadu state.

In an interrogation with the online level Digit astatine the New Delhi summit, the caput of AI strategy astatine Bridgital Loom, Muthulakshmi Nellaiappan, pointed retired that a caller weaver takes much than 15 years to maestro the art.

“With the technologies we person successful manus … the younger weaver who has conscionable entered the accomplishment tin go a maestro overmuch sooner,” she said.

Several classical Indian motifs utilized by accepted weavers [Courtesy of Burgoyne Original Masters]

Technology flattens the master-apprentice hierarchy of accepted cognition systems. The weaver nary longer has to conceptualise oregon retrieve patterns, colours and codes; helium blindly follows the machine’s instructions, handing creativity and representation to AI.

Nellaiappan said that since a ample percent of India’s looms are non-electronic, TCS has ensured its strategy works with handlooms arsenic good and that it was indispensable for scaling up the technology.

But integer looms besides rise different question: Who owns civilization erstwhile it turns into plain data?

For generations, India’s textile cognition sat extracurricular intelligence spot systems. It lived successful assemblage memory, passed from maestro to apprentice with nary certificate of ownership. Kanchipuram, Mekhela-Sador, Sanganeri and Banarasi are names for places that these textiles helped shape, not simply emerged from.

Now, this cognition is entering generative models that beryllium thing to these traditions.

For designers and manufacturers, the possibilities are seductive: Motifs combined astatine will, colours changed with a command, and thousands of designs generated instantly. The instrumentality offers abundance.

The artisan, connected the different hand, has ever lived with scarcity: Of money, bargaining power, oregon recognition.

Ananthalakshmi Vadivel, a third-generation weaver and proprietor of Vadivel Silk Looms successful Kanchipuram, says their task is already competing successful the marketplace with cheaper Kanchipuram sarees produced connected physics looms.

“Perhaps, with AI, these sellers tin make trending designs faster and cheaper to pull wide consumers. But these imitations tin ne'er regenerate the original,” she told Al Jazeera.

“There volition ever beryllium a marketplace for authentic Kanchipuram and handcrafted textiles, nary substance however overmuch exertion makes the imitation cheaper. True Kanchipuram weave, colour, and designs tin lone beryllium created by hand, and discerning buyers cognize this.”

Then again, the question is nary longer whether AI tin recreate a textile. It definite can. The question is: Who gets paid erstwhile it does?

Legal gaps

In December 2025, the national government’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade floated a statutory “blanket licence” – a strategy wherever AI developers could bid models connected lawfully obtained copyrighted worldly without seeking support from each rights holder. Once commercialised, those systems would beryllium royalties to copyright owners astatine rates acceptable by the government.

But intelligence spot (IP) laws presume a traceable enactment with a traceable author. A motif, connected the different hand, is communal property, its method passed down done generations with nary azygous originator.

In specified cases, who is entitled to royalty and copyright? The artisan who archetypal created the design? The lensman who documented it? The researcher who assembled the dataset? The developer who built the tool? India’s laws connection nary wide answers. The artisan whose sanction ne'er appeared connected a statement whitethorn erstwhile again beryllium missing from the paperwork.

A weaver successful West Bengal authorities rinses the colourful jute fibre to adust nether the sun, which volition beryllium utilized to extract threads to marque handloom dresses [Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

Meanwhile, the authorities is readying a dedicated AI-handloom probe section nether the Centre of Excellence for Handloom Technology astatine the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) successful the capital, New Delhi. Inaugurated successful August, the $1.4m installation aims to modernise India’s handloom assemblage by combining accepted weaving practice with modern technology.

The authorities besides plans to registry thousands of weavers and acceptable their handlooms with sensors that person weave patterns into integer data, and contented QR-coded tags to hint provenance. Maharashtra’s Vingatha strategy does thing akin astatine the authorities level by authenticating handloom sarees specified arsenic Paithani and Karvat Kathi.

The thought is simple: If a saree tin archer you wherever it came from, the idiosyncratic who made it becomes harder to erase.

While these measures cannot halt AI-enabled plan and wide production, they whitethorn springiness artisans much visibility and crook each portion into an archive.

In creation galleries, the accepted textiles are progressively shedding the statement of trade for the much lucrative class of modern art.

Gurjeet Singh, an creator from Chandigarh city, precocious hosted a textile-based solo amusement successful New York. His enactment transforms discarded fabrics, buttons and embroidered scraps into sculptures that research queer individuality and societal prejudices surrounding sex and sexuality.

Sayan Chanda, an Indian creator based successful London, works with chopped and rewoven vintage Bengali quilts to question fixed notions of taste belonging. Gurugram-based creator Sumakshi Singh uses delicate embroidery and suspended thread structures to reconstruct the architectural fragments of vanished homes, gardens and idiosyncratic histories. There are galore more.

An creation assemblage successful New Delhi displaying immoderate weaving traditions [Courtesy of Burgoyne Original Masters]

In New Delhi, 20 specified artisans and craft-led collectives featured past period astatine an creation amusement celebrating the accepted textile crafts.

“Our purpose is to contiguous these accepted crafts arsenic surviving practices that proceed to germinate done modern artisans, alternatively than arsenic practice to beryllium archived. Kanmai Payun, 1 of the artists featured successful the show, for example, is the past practitioner of Fulor Saneki, a angiosperm signifier utilized by Assamese weavers. We encouraged her to thatch her 17-year-old lad truthful the trade outlives her,” Aparupa Ray Ganguly, the curator of the show, told Al Jazeera.

But arsenic textiles summation worth successful creation galleries, their makers bash not needfully summation automatic power implicit their work.

In April, different creation accumulation successful New Delhi, titled No ‘One’ Maker, saw artisans missing from the show’s preview, exposing however accepted textiles are aestheticised, but the radical who transportation that cognition stay unrecognised.

“You cannot abstracted the names from the community. Call your mass-produced enactment integer prints and permission the accepted names to the archetypal artisans,” says Chhipa, the artisan and merchant from Rajasthan.