In 2023, an incredible moment in the fashion industry, Sarah Murray’s first introduction to an artificial model. The campaign model, a striking dark-skinned woman with awesome natural hair, appeared in the first ads wearing a dib-dib Levi’s brand denim overall dress. This introduction of AI-generated models has sparked a significant debate about authenticity, representation, and the ethical implications of using technology in an industry that has long relied on human talent.
As brands try to save money and do more with less, many are choosing AI models instead of going for live models. Paul Mouginot noted the high price of hiring live models. This is even more the case when brands want to get them in multiple looks, styles, shoes, and accessories. This move in the direction of artificial modeling raises many questions—including what does the future of fashion modeling look like? Yet it bears even greater risk for human models.
The Financial Appeal of AI in Fashion
Despite the high-fidelity glamour and promise of generative AI models, for fashion brands the appeal focuses on saving money. As Amy Odell noted, it’s just a lot less expensive for brands to deploy models like this now.
“It’s just so much cheaper for [brands] to use AI models now. Brands need a lot of content, and it just adds up. So if they can save money on their print ad or their TikTok feed, they will.” – Amy Odell
As more and more brands create content at an unparalleled level, the economic benefits of AI grow even more attractive. Sinead Bovell emphasized that brands can create tailored narratives by leveraging diverse identities through AI, although she termed this practice “robot cultural appropriation.”
Murray expressed his disappointment that this trend still impacted human models. He added that if brands opened themselves up to live talent through castings, they would find a bounty of talent waiting on them. Her main point was that if brands talked to real humans, they wouldn’t have to depend on fake dolls.
“If those [brands] ever had the opportunity to stand in line at an open casting call, they would know about the endless amounts of models, including myself, that would dream of opportunities to work with their brands.” – Sarah Murray
With the advent of AI models comes an important ethical conversation around creative industries. PJ Pereira noted that the traditional marketing system was built around producing a limited number of large content pieces each year.
“There’s no way to scale from four to 400 or 400,000 with just process tweaks.” – PJ Pereira
As fashion brands become more dependent on AI-generated content, so do fears over possible homogeneity and bias in representation. Pereira cautioned that the increase of content created by people without a purpose could further bias AI systems. This would in turn result in more inauthentic casting of diversity.
To address this challenge, Pereira stressed the need to train AI models across a wide spectrum of people’s appearances. He added that if this curation doesn’t happen, AI outputs will only reproduce biases present in the world, not actual diversity.
“You need to train [models] with a wide range of appearances. Because if you don’t, the AI will reflect whatever biases it was trained on.” – PJ Pereira
Murray articulated these worries with such passion. He contended that if Vogue introduces AI models into its fashion editorials, it might legitimize artificial figures in an arena that has long valued authenticity.
“If Vogue ends up doing editorials with AI models, I think that’s going to make it okay.” – Amy Odell
The Future of Human Models
As brands like Veepee, H&M, Mango, and Calvin Klein turn to AI models for their campaigns, many industry professionals are advocating for the rights of human models. Sara Ziff is currently working on passing the Fashion Workers Act, which aims to ensure that brands obtain clear consent from models before utilizing their digital replicas and provide appropriate compensation.
Murray likes to refer to her team as “AI artisans.” They use tools like Flux from Black Forest Labs in innovative ways to iterate on AI-generated models. The new model is a gamechanger, letting models appear at multiple shoots in a single day and opening up lucrative new income streams.
“They would never need to supplement with anything fake.” – Sarah Murray
While calling for tech innovation to advance brand modeling, Bovell implores brands to focus on narrative and being genuine. In doing so, she encourages them to take advantage of the moments where they can tell compelling human stories—going beyond the tech.
“Start to take those opportunities to tell your unique human story.” – Sinead Bovell
