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

Technological tools meant to preserve a craft are now able to digitally reproduce it without involving the craftsperson.

An Indian weaver prepares silk threads before weaving a fabric at a handloom factory on the outskirts of Hyderabad, India [File: Mahesh Kumar A/AP]

Bitupan Deka was out shopping for a “gamusa” (traditional scarf) with his mother in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya when he noticed something unusual.

“Every shop selling the scarf had the same handful of patterns repeated over and over,” he told Al Jazeera over the telephone from Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.

list 1 of 4 How US tariffs are unraveling India’s textile industry

list 2 of 4 Photos: Weavers of India’s famous Banarasi sari are struggling

list 3 of 4 Fast fashion and the dark side of textile recycling in India

list 4 of 4 AI tool helps stranded protesters find their way home in the Indian capital

“When I asked around, I found that weavers in Sualkuchi [district in neighbouring Assam state] are paid a one-time fee of roughly 2,000 rupees [$21] for each design they develop, instead of royalties. Cutting down the number of designs they produce was a cost-saving practice followed by the manufacturers.”

Bitupan Deka [Courtesy of Bitupan Deka]

This discovery prompted Deka, an assistant professor of computer technology at Shillong’s MIT University, to create a system that can produce infinite new designs for such fabrics.

“My work isn’t meant to replace the traditional designers. I hope, instead, that it will become a tool in their hands to create new and modern motifs more easily, so the consumers can have variety,” Deka said.

Once the patent, which is being applied for under the research and development department of his university, comes through, Deka plans to monetise the system by making it a commercial designing service that the textile industry can avail.

In India’s varied textile traditions, patterns and motifs carry the memory of a place and the mythology of its people – sometimes even the history of migrations.

The designs are imagined by weavers from things that exist around them, and then painted with locally available colours, mostly using carved clay and wooden frames. These weavers do not simply reproduce a pattern; they inherit it. Their hands hesitate where their grandmother’s did, and they know why a particular flower must face left.

A computer has no such inheritance or hesitation. It learns by analysing pictures and repeating them in endless variations. And yet, as Deka’s system shows, the computer can now draw and weave the same flower.

The Rekh Sanganeri Dataset is a similar system developed for hand-block printed Sanganeri textiles from the western Indian state of Rajasthan. It includes high-resolution images of printed patterns, annotated down to ink bleed and slight misalignment – the imperfections that are the hallmark of the handmade work.

Its developer, Reddy Sai Nivas C, says it should be used as a resource for research and art, not as a substitute for artisans.

But the disclaimer is the paradox: Tools built to preserve a craft are making its visual language easier to digitally reproduce without involving the craftsperson.

Dinesh Chhipa comes from one of the oldest Chhipa families, an artisan and merchant caste renowned for dyeing and block printing. He is a Bagru designer – a block printing technique from Bagru town in the western state of Rajasthan – and a textile businessman.

“Traditional craft is slow to produce. Even if someone offered us a fortune, we wouldn’t be able to produce these pieces in mass numbers, so I don’t fault those using digital technology and AI to fill the gap,” he told Al Jazeera.

“But don’t borrow craft and regional names like Bagru and Jaipuri [named after the capital city of Rajasthan]. These designs and motifs were born out of a culture and necessities of the communities they come from.”

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

Who owns culture when it turns into plain data?

India has been digitising its textile memory for years – from the Botanical Survey of India’s historical collections to the Bharatiya Vastra Shilpa Kosh, a national 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 knowledge could disappear. But digitisation also allows the same archive to be used by an AI system seeking to reproduce these crafts at scale.

At the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February this year, Indian software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) showcased Bridgital Loom, an AI system that converts textile designs into loom-ready instructions. LED lights on the loom guide a weaver through the thread sequences of intricate Banarasi and Kanchipuram patterns – named after the cities where these iconic arts grew.

TCS says the technology helps weavers execute complex designs faster and with fewer errors, and is meant to be a bridge between the artisans and technology. A pilot project that uses the loom is already under way at Kanchipuram, a town in southern Tamil Nadu state.

In an interview with the online platform Digit at the New Delhi summit, the head of AI strategy at Bridgital Loom, Muthulakshmi Nellaiappan, pointed out that a new weaver takes more than 15 years to master the art.

“With the technologies we have in hand … the younger weaver who has just entered the skill can become a master much sooner,” she said.

Several classic Indian motifs used by traditional weavers [Courtesy of Bitupan Deka]

Technology flattens the master-apprentice hierarchy of traditional knowledge systems. The weaver no longer has to conceptualise or remember patterns, colours and codes; he blindly follows the machine’s instructions, handing creativity and memory to AI.

Nellaiappan said that since a large percentage of India’s looms are non-electronic, TCS has ensured its system works with handlooms as well and that it was essential for scaling up the technology.

But digital looms also raise another question: Who owns culture when it turns into plain data?

For generations, India’s textile knowledge sat outside intellectual property systems. It lived in community memory, passed from master to apprentice with no certificate of ownership. Kanchipuram, Mekhela-Sador, Sanganeri and Banarasi are names for places that these textiles helped shape, not merely emerged from.

Now, this knowledge is entering generative models that owe nothing to these traditions.

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

The artisan, on the other hand, has always lived with scarcity: Of money, bargaining power, or recognition.

Ananthalakshmi Vadivel, a third-generation weaver and owner of Vadivel Silk Looms in Kanchipuram, says their venture is already competing in the market with cheaper Kanchipuram sarees produced on electronic looms.

“Perhaps, with AI, these sellers can create trending designs faster and cheaper to attract mass consumers. But these imitations can never replace the original,” she told Al Jazeera.

“There will always be a market for authentic Kanchipuram and handcrafted textiles, no matter how much technology makes the imitation cheaper. True Kanchipuram weave, colour, and designs can only be created by hand, and discerning buyers know this.”

Then again, the question is no longer whether AI can recreate a textile. It sure can. The question is: Who gets paid when it does?

In December 2025, the federal government’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade floated a statutory “blanket licence” – a system where AI developers could train models on lawfully obtained copyrighted material without seeking permission from each rights holder. Once commercialised, those systems would owe royalties to copyright owners at rates set by the government.

But intellectual property (IP) laws assume a traceable work with a traceable author. A motif, on the other hand, is communal property, its technique passed down through generations with no single originator.

In such cases, who is entitled to royalty and copyright? The artisan who first created the design? The photographer who documented it? The researcher who assembled the dataset? The developer who built the tool? India’s laws offer no clear answers. The artisan whose name never appeared on a label may once again be missing from the paperwork.

A weaver in West Bengal state rinses the colourful jute fibre to dry under the sun, which will be used to extract threads to make handloom dresses [Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

Meanwhile, the government is planning a dedicated AI-handloom research department under the Centre of Excellence for Handloom Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the capital, New Delhi. Inaugurated in August, the $1.4m facility aims to modernise India’s handloom sector by combining traditional weaving heritage with contemporary technology.

The government also plans to register thousands of weavers and fit their handlooms with sensors that convert weave patterns into digital data, and issue QR-coded tags to trace provenance. Maharashtra’s Vingatha system does something similar at the state level by authenticating handloom sarees such as Paithani and Karvat Kathi.

The idea is simple: If a saree can tell you where it came from, the person who made it becomes harder to erase.

While these measures cannot stop AI-enabled design and mass production, they may give artisans more visibility and turn each piece into an archive.

‘Cannot separate names from community’

In art galleries, the traditional textiles are increasingly shedding the label of craft for the more lucrative category of contemporary art.

Gurjeet Singh, an artist from Chandigarh city, recently hosted a textile-based solo show in New York. His work transforms discarded fabrics, buttons and embroidered scraps into sculptures that explore queer identity and social prejudices surrounding gender and sexuality.

Sayan Chanda, an Indian artist based in London, works with cut and rewoven vintage Bengali quilts to question fixed notions of cultural belonging. Gurugram-based artist Sumakshi Singh uses delicate embroidery and suspended thread structures to reconstruct the architectural fragments of vanished homes, gardens and personal histories. There are many more.

An art gallery in New Delhi displaying some weaving traditions [Courtesy of Burgoyne Original Masters]

In New Delhi, 20 such artisans and craft-led collectives featured last month at an art show celebrating the traditional textile crafts.

“Our aim is to present these traditional crafts as living practices that continue to evolve through contemporary artisans, rather than as heritage to be archived. Kanmai Payun, one of the artists featured in the show, for example, is the last practitioner of Fulor Saneki, a flower pattern used by Assamese weavers. We encouraged her to teach her 17-year-old son so the craft outlives her,” Aparupa Ray Ganguly, the curator of the show, told Al Jazeera.

But as textiles gain value in art galleries, their makers do not necessarily gain automatic control over their work.

In April, another art exhibition in New Delhi, titled No ‘One’ Maker, saw artisans missing from the show’s preview, exposing how traditional textiles are aestheticised, but the people who carry that knowledge remain unrecognised.

“You cannot separate the names from the community. Call your mass-produced work digital prints and leave the traditional names to the original artisans,” says Chhipa, the artisan and merchant from Rajasthan.

旨在保护工艺的技术工具现在能够在无需工匠参与的情况下，以数字方式复制工艺。

在印度海得拉巴郊区的一家手织机工厂里，一名印度织工正在准备丝线，准备织布。[图片：Mahesh Kumar A/AP]

比图潘·德卡和他的母亲在印度东北部的梅加拉亚邦购物，想买一条“gamusa”（传统围巾），这时他注意到了一些不寻常的事情。

“每家卖这种围巾的商店里，都反复出现那几个相同的图案，”他在梅加拉亚邦首府西隆通过电话告诉半岛电视台。

列表 1/4：美国关税如何摧毁印度纺织业

图2/4：印度著名贝纳拉斯纱丽的织工们正面临困境

列表 3/4：印度快时尚与纺织品回收的阴暗面

列表 4/4：人工智能工具帮助滞留在印度首都的抗议者找到回家的路

“我四处打听后发现，苏阿尔库奇（邻近阿萨姆邦的一个地区）的织工们每设计一个图案，就能获得大约2000卢比（约合21美元）的一次性报酬，而不是版税。减少他们设计的图案数量是制造商们为了节省成本而采取的一种做法。”

比图潘·德卡 [由比图潘·德卡提供]

这一发现促使西隆MIT大学计算机技术助理教授德卡（Deka）创建了一个可以为这类面料生成无限新设计的系统。

“我的作品并非旨在取代传统设计师。相反，我希望它能成为他们手中的工具，让他们更容易地创造出新颖现代的图案，从而为消费者提供更多选择，”德卡说道。

一旦他所在大学研发部门申请的专利获得批准，Deka 计划将该系统商业化，使其成为纺织行业可以利用的商业设计服务。

在印度丰富多彩的纺织传统中，图案和纹样承载着一个地方的记忆和当地人民的神话——有时甚至是迁徙的历史。

这些图案是织工们根据身边的事物想象出来的，然后用当地的颜料绘制而成，大多使用雕刻过的黏土和木制框架。这些织工并非简单地复制图案，而是将其传承下来。她们的手会像祖母一样停顿，她们也知道为什么某朵花必须朝左。

计算机没有这种遗传或犹豫。它通过分析图像并不断重复练习来学习。然而，正如德卡的系统所展示的那样，计算机现在已经能够绘制和编织出同一朵花。

Rekh Sanganeri 数据集是一个类似的系统，专为印度西部拉贾斯坦邦的手工木版印花 Sanganeri 纺织品而开发。它包含印花图案的高分辨率图像，并详细标注了墨迹晕染和轻微错位——这些瑕疵正是手工制品的标志。

它的开发者 Reddy Sai Nivas C 表示，它应该被用作研究和艺术的资源，而不是替代工匠。

但免责声明中存在一个悖论：旨在保护工艺的工具，反而使得工艺的视觉语言更容易在不让工匠参与的情况下进行数字化复制。

迪内什·奇帕出身于奇帕家族最古老的家族之一，这是一个以染色和木版印刷闻名的工匠和商人阶层。他是一位巴格鲁设计师——巴格鲁是一种源自印度西部拉贾斯坦邦巴格鲁镇的木版印刷技法——同时也是一位纺织品商人。

“传统工艺生产速度很慢。即使有人出高价，我们也无法大规模生产这些产品，所以我并不责怪那些利用数字技术和人工智能来填补这一空白的人，”他告诉半岛电视台。

“但不要借用巴格鲁（Bagru）和斋浦尔（Jaipuri）（以拉贾斯坦邦首府命名）等工艺和地域名称。这些设计和图案源于它们所属社区的文化和需求。”

Dinesh Chhipa 是一位来自拉贾斯坦邦的工匠和商人。[图片由 Burgoyne Original Masters 提供]

当文化变成纯粹的数据时，谁拥有它？

多年来，印度一直在对其纺织品记忆进行数字化——从印度植物调查局的历史收藏到由国立国家时装技术学院和高级计算发展中心 (C-DAC) 建立的国家门户网站 Bharatiya Vastra Shilpa Kosh。

如果没有记录，这些脆弱的传统和知识可能会消失。但数字化也使得人工智能系统能够利用同样的档案资料，大规模地复原这些工艺。

今年2月在新德里举行的印度人工智能影响力峰会上，印度软件公司塔塔咨询服务公司（TCS）展示了Bridgital Loom，这是一款人工智能系统，可以将纺织品设计转化为可用于织机的指令。织机上的LED灯会引导织工按照线序织造出复杂的贝纳拉斯和康吉布勒姆图案——这些图案以孕育它们的两座城市命名。

TCS表示，这项技术能够帮助织工更快、更准确地完成复杂的设计，旨在搭建工匠与科技之间的桥梁。目前，在泰米尔纳德邦南部城镇坎奇普拉姆，一项使用该织机的试点项目已经启动。

在新德里峰会上接受在线平台 Digit 采访时，Bridgital Loom 的人工智能战略负责人 Muthulakshmi Nellaiappan 指出，一名新织工需要 15 年以上的时间才能掌握这门技艺。

“凭借我们掌握的技术……刚开始学习这门技艺的年轻织工可以更快地成为大师，”她说。

传统织工常用的几种经典印度图案 [图片由 Bitupan Deka 提供]

技术打破了传统知识体系中师徒传承的等级制度。织工不再需要构思或记忆图案、颜色和代码；他只需盲目地遵循机器的指令，将创造力和记忆力拱手让给了人工智能。

Nellaiappan 表示，由于印度很大一部分织布机是非电子织布机，TCS 确保其系统也能与手织机配合使用，这对于扩大技术规模至关重要。

但数字织机也引出了另一个问题：当文化变成纯粹的数据时，谁拥有它？

几代以来，印度的纺织知识一直游离于知识产权体系之外。它存在于社群记忆中，师徒相传，没有任何所有权证明。康契普拉姆、梅克拉-萨多尔、桑加内里和瓦拉纳西这些地名，并非仅仅源于这些纺织品，而是与它们共同塑造了这些地貌。

现在，这种知识正在被引入到与这些传统毫无关联的生成模型中。

对于设计师和制造商而言，其可能性极具诱惑力：图案可随意组合，颜色可一键更改，瞬间即可生成数千种设计。这台机器提供了丰富的选择。

另一方面，工匠却一直生活在匮乏之中：金钱、议价能力或认可。

坎奇普拉姆 Vadivel 丝绸织机的第三代织工兼所有者 Ananthalakshmi Vadivel 表示，他们的企业已经在市场上与用电子织机生产的更便宜的坎奇普拉姆纱丽展开竞争。

她告诉半岛电视台：“或许，借助人工智能，这些卖家可以更快、更便宜地创造出流行设计来吸引大众消费者。但这些仿制品永远无法取代原版。”

“无论科技如何让仿制品价格更低廉，正宗的康吉普兰手工纺织品永远都会有市场。真正的康吉普兰织物、色彩和设计只能通过手工制作，而眼光独到的买家都明白这一点。”

那么，问题已经不再是人工智能能否复制纺织品了。它当然可以。问题是：当它做到这一点时，谁来买单？

2025年12月，联邦政府的工业和内部贸易促进部提出了一项法定“一揽子许可”方案——该方案允许人工智能开发者使用合法获得的受版权保护的材料训练模型，而无需获得每位版权所有者的许可。一旦这些系统商业化，开发者将按照政府规定的费率向版权所有者支付版税。

但知识产权法假定作品具有可追溯的作者。而图案则属于公共财产，其技法代代相传，没有单一的原创者。

在这种情况下，谁有权获得版税和版权？是最初创作设计的工匠？拍摄照片的摄影师？收集数据集的研究人员？还是开发工具的开发者？印度的法律没有给出明确的答案。那位名字从未出现在标签上的工匠，可能再次从相关文件中消失。

西孟加拉邦的一位织工正在冲洗色彩斑斓的黄麻纤维，准备在阳光下晾晒，这些纤维将被用来提取线材，制作手工织布服装。[Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images]

与此同时，政府计划在位于首都新德里的印度理工学院（IIT）手织机技术卓越中心下设立一个专门的人工智能手织机研究部门。该中心于8月落成，耗资140万美元，旨在通过将传统织造技艺与现代技术相结合，实现印度手织机行业的现代化。

政府还计划登记数千名织工，并在他们的手织机上安装传感器，将织纹转化为数字数据，并发放二维码标签以追溯产地。马哈拉施特拉邦的Vingatha系统在邦一级也开展了类似的工作，用于认证Paithani和Karvat Kathi等手织纱丽。

这个想法很简单：如果一件纱丽能告诉你它的来历，那么制作它的人就更难被抹去。

虽然这些措施无法阻止人工智能辅助的设计和大规模生产，但它们可以提高工匠的知名度，并将每一件作品变成一份档案。

“无法将姓名与社群分开”

在艺术画廊里，传统纺织品正逐渐摆脱工艺品的标签，转而进入利润更高的当代艺术类别。

来自昌迪加尔市的艺术家古尔吉特·辛格最近在纽约举办了一场以纺织品为主题的个人展览。他的作品将废弃的布料、纽扣和刺绣碎料转化为雕塑，探讨酷儿身份以及围绕性别和性取向的社会偏见。

定居伦敦的印度艺术家萨扬·钱达（Sayan Chanda）利用裁剪和重新编织的孟加拉老式被子，质疑人们对文化归属的固有观念。古尔格拉姆艺术家苏玛克希·辛格（Sumakshi Singh）则运用精致的刺绣和悬挂的线状结构，重构已消失的房屋、花园和个人历史的建筑碎片。还有许多其他艺术家。

新德里一家艺术画廊展示了一些编织传统[图片由Burgoyne Original Masters提供]

上个月，新德里举办了一场艺术展，庆祝传统纺织工艺，展出了 20 位这样的工匠和工艺团体的作品。

“我们的目标是将这些传统工艺呈现为鲜活的技艺，让它们通过当代工匠的传承不断发展，而不是作为需要存档的遗产。例如，参展艺术家之一的坎迈·帕云（Kanmai Payun）是阿萨姆邦织工使用的一种花卉图案——弗洛尔·萨内基（Fulor Saneki）的最后一位传承者。我们鼓励她将这门技艺传授给17岁的儿子，让这项技艺在她身后得以延续。”展览策展人阿帕鲁帕·雷·甘古利（Aparupa Ray Ganguly）告诉半岛电视台。

但是，随着纺织品在艺术画廊中价值的提升，其制作者并不一定会自动获得对其作品的控制权。

今年四月，新德里举办的另一场名为“无人制作”的艺术展，其预展中却不见工匠的身影，这揭示了传统纺织品是如何被美化的，而掌握这些知识的人却仍然不被认可。

“你不能把名字和社群分开。把你批量生产的作品称为数码印刷品，把传统的名字留给真正的工匠们吧。”来自拉贾斯坦邦的工匠兼商人奇帕说道。