Should you trust an AI crochet pattern with your evening?

You can follow a crochet pattern correctly and still get the wrong object. That is a rotten way to spend the evening you set aside to make something. AB Crafty physically made four small projects from ChatGPT and Gemini instructions. In one ball pattern, the stitch totals added up, but too few middle rounds produced something flatter than a ball. A mushroom pattern left the maker to figure out how to join openings with different stitch counts. This is one maker’s small test, not a ranking of today’s models. But it gives me a reason to look for a photo of a finished piece actually made from the instructions—not just a pretty picture beside them. For a first project, I’d pick an existing pattern with a worked example and use an assistant to explain an abbreviation or an awkward sentence. Keep the original beside the explanation so a helpful rewrite doesn’t quietly change the instruction. Generating a new design sounds fun when experimenting is the point; less so when you just wanted a little mushroom by bedtime. If you’ve tried an AI crochet pattern, where did you first notice trouble: while reading, while stitching, or only when the pieces came together?