Josh Pigford was doing yard work on a Sunday afternoon when something broke and he needed to buy a replacement part. The tech entrepreneur started searching Amazon, trying to find the right piece, only to find endless AI fake after dupe after faux object. Completely unable to find the name-brand item he was looking for, he had to sift through dozens of knockoffs with incredibly similar names and nearly identical photos. And that’s how his browser extension Knockoff was born earlier this summer. In July, he posted about how his creation helped him find a shop with 1,800 reviews selling a “handmade” necklace that he was able to prove was actually just a $6 necklace from Alibaba, and the post quickly went viral.The new tool uses AI to filter through thousands of products and photos, with the goal in mind of directing people away from any sort of copies. “It does two things, at least on a basic level,” Pigford tells ELLE. “It looks at the brand name. Typical knockoff brands tend to be trademark spam, like someone just smashed their hands on a keyboard and whatever came out is what they named their brand. It also does actual trademark searches to see, is this even a brand at all or is this completely fabricated?” There’s also a community-managed element where people report brands that they believe are knockoffs, with a verification process. In addition to the consumer-facing browser extension for Amazon, Knockoff designed a service for small businesses on Shopify that scans platforms like Etsy, Temu, Shein, and DhGate to take down the fakes.Ezra Acayan//Getty ImagesImitations of luxury bags imported from China are seen for sale at a mall on April 23, 2025 in Manila, PhilippinesAccording to Knockoff, shoppers using the extension encountered 21,833 distinct brand names on clothing and accessory products on Amazon, with fewer than 5 percent being recognizable brands. Roughly 37 percent scored as made-up brands, with names like ABTIPQM, AIYJWXINP, and AFCJLTO. The company says a good bulk of the fashion listings on the site are made-up brands or copies of real brands, citing COOFANDY, a made-up brand, which showed up in those shoppers’ fashion results more often than Levi’s and was also the fashion brand Knockoff users reported most. According to an analysis of USPTO trademark data by Knockoff, a single e-commerce company in Xiamen, China, holds U.S. trademarks behind 357 distinct brand names, including fake European designer names FABIEN SIEFFERT and CHARLIE POMMIER, which both still live on the register.Dupe culture has worked to steadily increase the rise of fashion fakes. As ironic as it is, AI is playing a major role in the creation of these kinds of products. But Pigford wants to use AI to try to stop the AI fashion fakes. “AI is used a lot of times to modify photos, and I think that especially in the last, say, 12 to 24 months, people are just having a harder time figuring out what’s real,” he says. “It’s so easy to spin up these little stores that’ll take your money and run, and people are just trying to figure out what’s legitimate or not. I think it kind of struck a chord.” Knockoff’s AI browser extension is still in its early days, but it’ll be interesting to see how the technology evolves and can be applied to the future of shopping.