Allegation

Lovable Ad Passed Off a Designer’s Handmade Website as A.I. Work

co-produced by AI28. October 2026, 13:37

Lovable branding lit up on the glass facade of the BFI IMAX cinema in London at night — Lovable branding on the BFI IMAX building in London. Image: Lovable

A company that sells websites built from a prompt should check that the ones it advertises were actually built that way.

The Swedish vibe-coding start-up Lovable ran a paid Instagram ad showing the website of Forge Automotive as an example of its own product. By his own account, though, the site was built by Joe Taylor, a designer at the agency 12 Studio, which counts Forge Automotive as a client. In a LinkedIn post, he accuses Lovable of misrepresentation. Lovable has since apologized publicly and discontinued the ad everywhere.

Lovable is a Stockholm-based platform that lets people build websites, apps and internal tools from a text description without traditional coding, known in the industry as vibe coding. Anton Osika is CEO and co-founder, and the product launched in November 2024. The company says more than 60 million projects have been created. In a Series C round, Lovable raised $400 million (about €344 million) at a $13.3 billion valuation (about €11.4 billion), led by Menlo Ventures and the Scaleup Europe Fund.

What Joe Taylor Alleges

Taylor writes that he used neither Lovable nor any other A.I. website builder. The award-winning project was designed by hand, built by hand and refined over two months of painstaking work. A.I. played a role in just two areas, he says: some imagery was generated with the tool ImagineArt, and he used Claude for quality assurance and performance improvements. Every interaction, every animation, every design decision and every line of code came from him.

He is not against A.I. and uses such tools himself where they add value. But there is a big difference between A.I. assisting the creative process and a company falsely claiming that someone else’s work was made with its product, he argues. He calls it misrepresentation. Independent designers and developers spend years mastering their craft, and their work is not free marketing material.

Taylor demanded an explanation and the removal of the ads. He also wants to know how something like this gets approved internally in the first place. At the same time, he asked his network for a law firm specializing in copyright and the unauthorized commercial use of creative work.

The ad ran on Lovable’s Instagram account and is labeled as advertising. It shows a laptop displaying the website of Forge Automotive, a studio for bespoke vehicle builds and styling.Who Joe Taylor Is

According to his Dribbble profile, Joe Ben Taylor is a designer and developer who works as a designer at 12 Studio. He describes himself as a logo lover, problem solver and drummer, and says his work combines style with logic. He lists the Forge website there as his own project, tagged with animation and parallax among other things. His profile also shows brand identities and websites, for example for Pocketchange. Forge Automotive is a client of 12 Studio.

Lovable Apologizes and Stops the Ad

Lovable responded with a public comment under Taylor’s post: “Hi Joe, we’re so sorry this happened. We’ve discontinued this ad everywhere and are investigating how this happened.” Taylor should contact Lovable’s support by email so the company can keep him updated.

How the ad was approved, and whether Lovable will reach an agreement with Taylor or his agency, remains open. Lovable speaks of an ongoing investigation in its reply but gives no details.

Creatives Accuse A.I. Companies of Theft

The case fits into a larger dispute: creatives have long accused A.I. companies of using their work without permission or payment to train A.I. models. Earlier this year, an alliance of around 800 artists, authors, actors and musicians launched the campaign “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” and spoke of theft on a massive scale. The signatories demand licensing agreements and the right to refuse the use of their work for generative A.I.

The Taylor case offers a concrete example of how little an A.I. company can care about authorship: a paid ad turned one person’s work into the showpiece for an A.I. product, without his knowledge, according to Taylor. The issue here is advertising rather than training data, but the pattern is the same.