With little more than five weeks to go to the opening of the 2026 CIBJO Congress in Vicenza, Italy, on September 4, 2026, the sixth of the pre-congress Special Reports has been released. Prepared by the CIBJO Ethics Commission, headed by Sara Yood, the report examines both the ethical and legal impacts and risks of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) on the jewellery industry.

A subset of Artificial Intelligence, GenAI is focused on creating new content, including jewellery designs, CAD models, renderings and customisations.

“There is a fundamental difference between AI-assisted work, in which a human remains the creative decision-maker, and AI-generated work, in which the system determines much of the expressive result,” write Ms. Yood.

The ethical use of GenAI should not undermine the intellectual property rights of designers and artisans, the Ethics Commission President notes, but points out that existing IP law is struggling to keep up with the fast-developing technology.

“One of the issues with AI is that, currently, it is essentially unregulated, meaning that there is little oversight as to how companies are building algorithms, where they are sourcing information, and how and even if they are preventing their algorithms from being trained on copyrighted material,” she points out.

In the absence of clear regulatory guidelines, individual companies should create their own guidelines, so that employees do not deliberately or inadvertently use materials that were copyrighted, patented or trademarked by others. “Having a governance framework for acceptable AI use will also prepare the business for continued evaluation of new GenAI systems as they come to market,” she writes.

“GenAI’s legitimacy within the jewellery sector will depend on whether it enhances – and does not diminish – human creativity, cultural relevance, and the trust from which jewellery derives its value,” Ms. Yood states.