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

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.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4How US tariffs are unraveling India’s textile industrylist 2 of 4Photos: Weavers of India’s famous Banarasi sari are strugglinglist 3 of 4Fast fashion and the dark side of textile recycling in Indialist 4 of 4AI tool helps stranded protesters find their way home in the Indian capitalend of list“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 ...