Why I'll Never Use AI to Design Jewelry

Written By Allie Perry May 16, 2025

*This article contains AI generated images for educational purposes.

I’ll never use AI to design jewelry. Ever. Let's talk about why.

First, let’s get back to basics. AI. Artificial Intelligence.

I’m sure my blog post isn’t the first time you’ve seen AI mentioned today, because it’s everywhere.

It’s more ubiquitous than Blockbuster stores in the 90’s.

It’s in your phone, alternating between talking to you without being summoned, and giving you the wrong answer to whatever you just asked it. “Sorry, I can’t help you with that.”

It’s replying in the chat or directing you to press one, then seven, then pound, on that phone call you made in an attempt to resolve a customer service issue with the help of an actual human. I know you’ve repeatedly snarled “REPRESENTATIVE” into your phone in increasing degrees of frustration. We all have

And social media is dripping with it. That ad showing a woman with what you may or may not have realized was six fingers on one hand and three on the other, the inflammatory replies from bots looking to instigate a fight, the algorithm itself…all AI.

It’s not all bad. AI can assist in medical diagnostics, potentially diagnosing lung cancer more accurately or predicting the progression of a disease. It can power robot-assisted surgeries, and enable things like remote patient monitoring.

It’s also not all good. To be able to meet demands from the millions of daily users in the United States alone, AI platforms have to train themselves on just about everything, often stealing existing data to do so. The platforms will say they “acquire” this data from publicly available sources…but artists, writers, and creators of any sort would disagree with this assessment. A book at the library is publicly available, but that doesn’t mean you can just take a book, claim the writing as your own, and then keep the book without offering any type of compensation. Copyright laws exist for a reason, though giants in the tech industry don't seem to care. 

Perhaps the trickiest thing about AI is that it’s nearly impossible to avoid, and most of us use it daily without even knowing it. Spam emails skip your inbox and go right to your junk folder, all thanks to AI. Your favorite music app builds you playlists based on music it already knows you like because its AI has been trained to do so by tracking you and learning your habits. Every Google search you make now spews forth an AI summary of answers, correct or otherwise.

The jewelry industry isn’t immune either. AI optimization of photos. The ability to virtually try on a piece of jewelry remotely. And my least favorite, generating designs.

Proponents of AI will try to convince you that trained software can quickly create unique designs.

So I tried it.

I fed AI the prompt, “design a one-of-a-kind pendant using one oval sapphire and ten round diamonds” and gave it no other specifications or parameters. It decided it wanted to use an 8x6mm oval sapphire, and 10 round brilliant diamonds that were 1.5-2mm each. It offered a few variations, which you can read in this screen cap of the reply:

But when I asked it to create an image, it spit out this:

At first glance you may not think it’s that bad, though I’m sure you’d agree with me that this extremely traditional design is anything but one-of-a-kind. A quick reverse image search yielded dozens of pendants almost exactly like it.

Let’s critique it, shall we?

The first thing I noticed (circled in red) is that fact that AI opted to just eliminate a prong from this setting to make room for the bail. This means that the top setting won’t match the rest. That’s the least of our concerns, though, since the absence of that top prong means the bail can rub against the diamond while the pendant’s being worn. This means that a) the bail can potentially knock the diamond out of its setting, and b) the diamond will definitely scratch and wear away at the bottom of the bail.

I then immediately noticed (circled in orange) some prongs that either didn’t match the rest or were completely unnecessary. They make no sense, and no designer would ever include them in this manner.

Since my eye had been drawn to the obviously extraneous prongs, I decided to evaluate the rest of the prongs more closely. This led me to realize that many of the prongs (circled in yellow) weren’t even holding the stones in. For a prong to work effectively, part of the metal has to come up and over the edge of the stone. It’s impossible to make this exact pendant and expect it to hold the diamonds in without glue. To maintain this prong set-up and spacing, the design would require either more stones of this size or larger stones to begin with, so the prongs could function as intended.

This brings me to my next point. I wasn’t strict with the parameters because I was trying to think like the average jewelry consumer who may or may not know specifics like prong placement or optimal stone size. As a reminder, AI chose to make the oval sapphire 8x6mm after I specified “ten round diamonds” in my prompt.

Imagine my surprise when it rendered a ring with 12 diamonds. It had to add those two extra diamonds to even come close to having the halo go all the way around the 8x6mm center stone. But my prompt specified 10 stones, meaning the correct course of action for this design would be to make the center stone closer to 6x4mm.

I realize that a fraction of a millimeter doesn’t seem like a lot. But in the jewelry world, those fractions could add up to misaligned stones, weird spacing, or a lot of extra cost. The exact stone sizes are particularly important when you’re looking to take gemstones out of one piece and redesign them into something new. I hate to break it to you, but your stones won’t grow or shrink just to fit into a design you happen to like.

On the subject of cost, attempting to price out this exact rendering is nearly impossible, but I can say that a 2mm diamonds cost just about twice as much as a 1.5mm diamond of similar quality, so if you were hoping to stick to a budget with the project, too bad. Doubly so since this sapphire is rendered as having no flaws.

You’d obviously want the flawless sapphire in your custom pendant to be set securely, right? And a bezel seems like a really secure option, right? Normally, bezels are very secure, but spoiler- this one is barely holding anything in place. The metal of that bezel should come up and over the edge of that center stone, evenly, all the way around. In this rendering, if the diamonds are 2mm, and the center stone is 8x6 as AI specified, the center oval would just barely be covered by the bezel, and the sides wouldn’t be covered at all. Drop this imaginary pendant in your jewelry box a little too haphazardly, and that center stone is popping out faster than Mentos dropped into Diet Coke.

Look at all of these markups!

AI made something that may seem good from afar, but is FAR from good. 

If you brought this exact design to me, and wanted to use the sizes AI specified, I’d have to break your heart and tell you all the reasons why this exact pendant wouldn’t work. I’d have to tell you how the stones were the wrong size, and the prongs were in a weird layout and also the wrong size, and how the minimal look of the prongs showed off the diamonds so much because they are basically only there for show and they’d cause you to lose half your diamonds the first time you wore the piece. You’d have a design you loved that was impossible to exactly duplicate, and you’d immediately have to settle for a modified design with a different visual feel than the original, or a different design altogether. 

AI jewelry design may seem enticing, but it’s the digital equivalent to the type of diet pill that’s sold on a basic cable infomercial at 2am. Too good to be true, and more effective at promising results than delivering them.

When you’re ready to have a custom piece of jewelry designed just for you, let me know. I’ll come up with a truly one-of-a-kind design that considers both form and function to fit your lifestyle and aesthetic, and I’ll make sure your stones (and heart) are safe from start to finish.