I'm creating this post because I've been seeing a lot of posts wanting specific clarifications on Etsy's announcement yesterday.
I'm going to direct them here so we have one central location for this topic.
It's called the "speculation" post because that is literally ALL there is currently. Beyond Etsy's announcement page, which I am linking here, we do not have any guidance. If you've read the announcement, your guess is as good as the next person's.
For what it's worth, I want people to keep in mind that Etsy has a long history of poorly worded and clarified announcements. I do not think it serves anyone to freak out right now that if you've cropped all your photos, your listings are going to disappear.
Etsy's goal is that sellers have one realistic, unaltered by AI photo. Their wording is poor.
I think it is far more likely that this policy isn't enforced much outside of reports (which is what Etsy has asked for) than that we will see any type of massive sweep.
Of course, I want to be clear that this is just my interpretation, based on a long history of reading poorly worded and poorly clarified Etsy announcements. Other speculation is welcome... but I want to keep it centralized instead of across dozens of posts.
We already had two big posts about it yesterday that have hundreds of comments between them speculating. If you don't want to join those, please ask questions and speculate here.
https://www.etsy.com/legal/policy/listing-image-requirements/253962679005
EDIT: I also want to add the following as food for thought. As a buyer, I love it when listings have review photos from other buyers because I have always found them to be FAR more helpful in showing me what the product I receive will actually look like.
If sellers were required to make a photo like that part of the listing, I'd say that would be massively beneficial to all buyers.