Shein has been sued in a California federal court by a Florida artist who claims the company uses artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies to scour the internet for popular designs, which it then copies and sells.
The case is Giana v. Shein Distribution Corp. et al., case number 2:25-cv-08637, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
The proposed class action is on behalf of artists, painters and other copyright owners who accuse Shein of copying artists’ works without permission, in violation of US copyright law.
Giana previously sought to bring a class action complaint against Shein in a New York federal court. That case was dismissed without prejudice in 2024 after the court found that the artist failed to establish that his claim arose from transactions in New York or that the situs of his alleged injury was New York.
Shein is a “fast fashion” company founded by Chinese billionaire Sky Xu in 2008. It creates products in days and markets them on a site with 600,000 items listed at a time.
According to Time, writing in 2024,
By November 2022, [Shein] was accounting for 50% of fast-fashion sales in the U.S. One in four Gen Z consumers now shop at Shein, while 44% make at least one Shein purchase monthly…
According to Fortune,
Along with rampant production associated with concerns over environmental unsustainability and forced labor, Shein’s practices have allowed it to sell products at a fraction of the price of its competitors—including 50% less than H&M—and grow astronomically in just a few years. The private company likely brought in over $30 billion in revenue in 2023, compared to the $23 billion the year before.
As Time reported,
Shein’s head of global strategy and corporate affairs, explained that more than 5,000 Shein suppliers recently gained access to an AI software platform to analyze customer preferences—information that the company then uses to produce small batches of merchandise to match supply in real-time. “We are using machine-learning technologies to accurately predict demand in a way we think is cutting-edge,” Peter Pernot-Day said. “The net effect of this is reducing inventory waste.
As Fortune reported, in 2024
plaintiff and artist Alan Giana accused Shein of using its electronic monitoring system and AI to track what consumers look at online, mostly over Instagram and TikTok, to identify trends and designs it anticipates being popular. The electronic monitoring would be particularly punishing to creators publishing their designs online looking for exposure, the complaint argues: If an artist’s post garners more online attention from users, it becomes a greater target for Shein’s data scraping to co-opt and mass-produce designs.
According to Vice, Shein also used an AI-generated version of Luigi Mangione, the alleged killer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, to model a $10 Shein t-shirt.
NPR reported in 2023 that Shein was accused of violating the federal anti-racketeering act (RICO) by copying independent designers’ works.
In that case, said NPR,
Three artists — Krista Perry, Larissa Martinez and Jay Baron — allege Shein made exact copies of their work without their knowledge, behavior that is part of a larger pattern of unethical business practices, including decimating the environment, fostering unsafe working conditions and avoiding paying taxes.
Shortly after that case was filed, reported Fortune, “competitor Temu sued Shein for “mafia-style intimidation of suppliers,” allegedly falsely detaining merchants and stealing business secrets.”
Previously,
Shein has faced several accusations of stealing designs in the past few years, including a crochet sweater, an enamel pin and earrings. But it can be difficult to settle lawsuits in the fashion industry because companies cannot copyright “useful things, at least not in their entirety,” Julie Zerbo, a lawyer and fashion blogger, told NPR in 2021.
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