Dragon bags and fantasy books are in the AI crosshairs

Leather goods artists are dealing with a sudden influx of AI-generated copycats and content theft.

Online vendors selling handmade bags and leather books for the fantasy crowd have encountered a new enemy: AI-generated dwarves.

Josephine is the creator of Designed by Daydreams. She’s been hand-making leather goods for four years. But recently, her inbox was flooded with messages from people finding AI-generated accounts stealing her content.

These AI videos start with teary-eyed, AI-generated characters — usually dwarves in fantasy costumes or beaten-down artists. In their sob stories, they complain that no one will buy their bags or even look at them. They then show either AI-generated videos of the same characters working on the fake bags, or stolen content from real creators working on real bags, while only showing their hands. But, even the fully AI-generated videos are clearly using stolen designs.

Using Instagram’s account transparency information and linking similar accounts across platforms, I know many are based in Slovenia and Russia. I found accounts across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Threads. Each account posts AI-generated content and links to scam websites in their bios, pretending to sell handcrafted goods.

Of the nine websites I surveyed, all were registered after February 24th, 2026, with most of them popping up in the first week of March. Real artists are up against growing armies of bots, all competing for the attention needed to sell products.

“I’m concerned that people are spending money on these fake bags and that I’ll see a drop in customers buying my products,” said Josephine. She notes that these accounts steal content from various creators. “They tend to mix our videos together.”

This includes Marcin and his wife Kaja, from Bearded Dragon Workshop and Smocza Manufaktura, respectively. Marcin’s video addressing the issue received over 200,000 views and became a hub for people calling out accounts and talking about what could be done. This is a big deal for him.

“Fighting those scammers became my mission,” Marcin said. He notes that “social media is almost [required] to reach a wide community.” When videos go viral, he gets more orders, but also attracts more AI copycats.

Artists have long dealt with both Temu and Amazon copies, and dropshipping scams. But recently, Marcin claims to have found over 40 scam accounts, with new ones popping up every day. I found 9 of these accounts, including a few that were likely coordinated, and others that seem to be copycats of the AI copycats themselves.

Custom dragon bags and leather book wrappers probably wouldn’t have been targets for 40+ scam accounts just a few years ago. Granted, fantasy and “romantasy” books are extremely popular. But now that AI-generated videos and AI-driven, agentic e-commerce sites are very accessible now, almost any niche is a target.

The accounts using these AI methods are damaging the artists they steal from, costing them sales and hurting their reputations. But even for customers, the best-case scenario is that they receive a bad-quality, ripoff product. It’s unclear if these scam websites ship products or just pocket the money.

Dragonanvil.com, the most infamous website, says on their FAQ that orders “ship from Ireland” (the account is likely from central Europe), and that tracking information may not show up for 30 days. Every product photo on their website is either AI-generated or stolen. There’s no evidence that they have any products at all.

These scammy social media accounts break the terms of service of TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook for AI transparency. I found a couple of dead links from YouTube and Instagram associated to these accounts, which points to some removals and bans already. But removals are slow. Josephine tried reporting the videos that stole her content, but said that “TikTok hasn’t done anything to help remove these accounts and videos.”

The largest AI account by followers, which links to both anvldragons.store and dragonanvil.com, had almost 45,000 followers as of March 9th. I’ve seen pages with similar follower accounts and ages get removed by TikTok, but only when they have AI-generated sexual content. These safe-for-work impersonation scams are often a lower priority.

Social media and e-commerce platforms should widen their definitions of impersonation to help prevent this. But in the meantime, if you’re interested in purchasing goods from an online artist, here’s what we recommend:

1. Check their account transparency information by following the guide here. Brand new accounts, or accounts that change their username often, are more likely to be scams.

2. Identify if their content uses typical AI formats (like the AI sob story).

3. Try to quote search their video titles and descriptions to see if they are a part of a larger AI generated content network.

For example, one TikTok video had the description with “Please help me buy ordering a bag at maevedragonbags.com“. The grammatical errors alone show that something is up here.

I took this text and “quote searched” it (I just put quotes around the phrase and Googled it). This uncovered three AI-generated accounts with posts containing the search. This is represented in the graph below. The middle blue dot represents the search itself, the pages that were associated with the searched phrase are in green, and their corresponding videos are in pink.

Thankfully, one of those “green dots” (accounts) that came up in this search was Designed by Daydreams, Josephine’s account. This simple search provided the context that helped me decide which accounts were fake while pointing me towards a real account. Josephine’s looked distinctly different and “real” next to the others.

Optimistically, this attention could benefit the real creators in the long run. Marcin says that it has been difficult, but the support has been heartwarming. “We received a lot of support from real artists, and that makes our lives easier.”