Sydney clothing label Lonely Kids Club says thousands of its T-shirt designs were copied and listed for sale on Temu, potentially after AI tools scraped the company’s website. Founder Warwick Levy says the alleged theft has caused significant financial and emotional harm, highlighting wider concerns that online marketplaces and AI companies enable the unauthorised use of artists’ and small businesses’ work.

Levy says the copied listings reproduced about 4,000 products, including exact descriptions, branding, mock-ups and photographs. After reportedly encountering failed complaint forms and unproductive emails, he used a trademark claim over the Lonely Kids Club name to have most listings removed; Temu said it had taken down the products and added the brand to its monitoring database. The dispute comes as the Australian government considers copyright reforms that could give AI companies broader access to online content for training purposes.