September 9, 2025, 12:05pm

Another day, another duel with AI slop. Unfortunately a recent deep fake has come in the guise of a friend.

Last Friday, Powell’s Books of Portland, Oregon—one of the country’s best loved bookstores and the largest indie in the world—found itself on the business end of a social media firestorm when local artists and booksellers credibly accused management of using AI art in a new spate of merch.

Portland artist Sam Pletcher threw the gotcha grenade with a scathing gram. “[Powell’s] has decidedly released a new merchandise collection that is, sadly, made up of AI designs,” they wrote in a caption. “It’s incredibly disappointing as this town is literally CHOCK FULL of artists, most of whom are underemployed or working paycheck to paycheck.”

Image via Sam Pletcher’s Instagram. (Sleuths will note the wolf’s creepy toes.)

Then the folks at Always Here, a queer & trans worker-owned bookstore in Portland, waded into the fray via bold Substack statement. Noting that criticizing a local “juggernaut” like Powell’s invited “a non-zero chance” that they’d face repercussions, this David charged their Goliath with deep hypocrisy.

“It’s an insult to life, to the human capacity for creating art, and to the writers that Powell’s ostensibly exists to celebrate,” leaders wrote of the slop art. “It’s our opinion that a bookstore resorting to the use of AI reflects a rot at the core of the organization.”

The Always Here letter also lent the allegations crucial context. Namely, the fact that Powell’s booksellers had been raising concerns about the use AI art long before the merch drop—concerns that management repeatedly overruled.

This latest ‘oopsie’ also fits an unfortunate pattern. For the past two years, ILWU Local 5, the union representing Powell’s booksellers, has been cataloguing instances of employee censorship at the company in this database.

The indie’s gotten recent flack for its sub-par wages. And many employees have expressed off the record anger at the store’s “unethical business practices” through this lively Reddit—but fear going public could cost them their jobs.

When Powell’s leadership did respond to the recent AI allegations, it was with a measure of equivocation. Though the company did not directly apologize for the blunder, they insisted that they “value the work of human artists” and “remain committed to keeping Powell’s designs rooted in creativity and imagination.”

Which might have been the end of it. But then the union clapped back in a statement:

We appreciate the fact that Powell’s is responding to this issue and also lament the fact that it took public outcry for them to do so. This fraught and embarrassing situation could have been easily avoided, as Powell’s workers have been raising concerns about the apparent use of AI in the company’s branded merch for months, to no avail.

If Powell’s leadership is truly ‘committed to keeping Powell’s designs rooted in creativity and imagination,’ we hope in the future they will be more receptive to feedback from their many creative and imaginative employees—among them, an enormously talented in-house design team.

The union also suggested that Powell’s leadership use this opportunity to take a “decisive and public position on generative AI and its place in an independent bookstore.” While helpfully adding their own, for context.

Their message concluded with the reassurance that “this statement was written by real, human, union workers.”

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this whole snafu—which alas seems likelier to be the beginning of a trend, rather than the end of one—is how a matrix of concerned readers, workers, fellow indies, and union reps can apply constructive pressure to a large organization and so keep them accountable to community values.

This is a hard task, strategically speaking. But we can see it working in the union communiques. In all their statements, ILWU Local 5 has modeled a “call in” approach, pairing righteous critiques with the reminder that “this is not a call for a boycott; it’s a call for solidarity.” Workers encourage customers not to abandon ship, but to ask Powell’s about their dodgier policies, and celebrate their good ones.

Similarly, the folks at Always Here have a clear ask that actually supports creatives—if AI art is an important issue to you? Bug management.

They reason that in the face of solid internal critiques, Powell’s leaders would only dare release this galling “AI-generated garbage” if they thought their customers wouldn’t notice or case.

As the best readers put it, “We noticed. We care.”

If you do, it’s time to make some noise.