While AI models might replace catalogue models for small labels that are starting out (maybe) and for e-commerce companies (definitely). I highly doubt it that they will replace real models for large companies and fashion boutiques now or ever. Because what people (women and men) are buying is aspiration wrapped in dead plant fibers. The reason why I buy a dress from Hervé Leger is because I want to look like old school Crawford making body-con a thing in the ‘90s https://media.glamour.com/photos/56959302d9dab9ff41b2a79b/ma... and make the painful process of getting into that shape and look seem “easy” while doing it.
Fashion isn’t about looking good in of itself. It’s about social proof-of-work. Knowing what to wear and pulling it off isn’t easy. It’s the raison d’être of the multi-billion dollar fashion and fitness industries. Women eat grass all day everyday and go on ridiculous juice cleanses while contorting their body into shapes that would put a pretzel to shame. If the world endures so much pain to look effortlessly good, Why should manufacturers be allowed to forego the pain? If the root of aspiration is making the impossible look like a breeze, then why would anyone want to buy from a computer generated perfect model that never had to feel the pull of a difficult stretch and stare in the mirror with guilty eyes?
The suspension of disbelief necessary for the social economy to function crumbled as soon as something is too perfect. Like Instagram photos. It’s not cool to slap on a filter anymore and stage a perfect photo. It’s too easy now. Just like Prisma was. What’s cool is to put in the work and make something imperfect so that everyone knows that you put in the effort and looked unflappably blasé while doing it.
Most models that are hired today are hired partly on their social presence. Having an audience, even a micro-audience, is essential for getting high paid gigs, because brands aren’t just selling the look; they’re selling the whole package associated with the look. Women like to buy from other women (and men like James Charles) whom they can aspire to. Tweens and teens want to look like the models on tik-tok. Young-adults and grown women want to look like their favorite YouTuber and Instagram celeb. They all want to participate in making something cool happen with their friends.
All of this and more is intrinsically social and human.
All of this and more means that as long as humans buy from other humans, brands will hire models to appeal to what’s most human; sexy, sexy crazy-making envy.
>The reason why I buy a dress from Hervé Leger is because I want to look like old school Crawford making body-con a thing in the ‘90s
This aspect of fashion gives you narratives you can use to weave the story you tell about yourself and present to others. AI generated characters can tap into this with created narrative while constantly also posessing the supernormal stimuli currently achieved by using photoshop on real models. That coupled with the switch in the focus of mass media from films to games and I think that while real models will not die away, digital models will not just be used in catalogue settings. I wouldn't be surprised if 2-D from the Gorillaz became the model for a clothing brand for instance, so it isn't even a question of photorealism.
>> brands will hire models to appeal to what’s most human; sexy, sexy crazy-making envy
You’re assuming that brands won’t create their own personas that drive that same result.
In fact, this has already happened - the best known one isn’t even a human - he’s a mouse, and millions of people buy t-shirts and other things with his picture on them. The company that owns him is rather large, and very good at appealing to humans with non-human characters: Disney.
This is the beginning of the end for models. Actors are next.
I don't know that we'll go full-tilt computer generated. The truth is probably somewhere between, where some companies and brands retain humans as a more honest and authentic way to connect with consumers. Then you'll also see ML models that go far into the spectrum of being impossibly perfect and inhuman.
It's honestly exciting to imagine where we'll be in twenty years. I don't think we'll resent it - it's got fascinating artistic potential and will probably be quite liberating to finally realize that the things we strive for are artificially distilled.
At the point where you can't distinguish between real/organic and generated, this argument collapses though.
What feels "human" can be manufactured. Imperfections can be artificial, too.
We like to believe we're flawless arbiters of what's human, but we can be fooled in almost all cases. Most of all in photos. The soul remains an abstract concept.
You buy the dress because you want to convince yourself you look like old school Crawford or you want others to be convinced that you look like old school Crawford.
The point of models 99% of the time is to show the clothes. This isn't going to get rid of super models, but it's going to step on the turf of all but the most popular models.
This may be true, but I'm sure the vast, vast, vast majority of people employed as models are these kinds of print and e-commerce models whose jobs are now at risk.
One side effect of that is that while modeling has always been very hard to pierce into, at least there are modeling opportunities for non celebrities. As the practice of using AI to generate models for all but higher end stuff grows, it will get harder and harder to pierce into. It’ll go from an industry with tens of thousands of workers - some paid a lot, some much less - to just a few hundreds of highly paid models who have every incentive to prevent newcomers from taking their spot.
It’s not a phenomenon unique to fashion, and it’s entirely problematic when tech kills the long tail of this sort of occupation. How will those people pay their bills now? Not all of them can become AI engineers, that’s for sure.
I find it frustrating how eager AI supporters are to dismiss legitimate concerns using the reasoning "Oh, well, it's always worked out before, I'm sure it'll work out again". What if it doesn't? And if it doesn't, it'll be too late to make changes and prevent suffering.
Take for example Japan - the land of anime girls on every piece of advertising. How much would the demand for human models expand if illustrated characters were not an alternative?
There's a scarcity in the type of human beauty that's sought after by the fashion industry. What if that scarcity didn't exist?
If people grow up with this new economic model of beauty and scarcity, maybe it would change the landscape of fashion entirely.
I’m posting this message from a local train in rural japan. The sides are plastered with ads but nowhere where i look at can i see anime girls.
While i know few instances where they exist, that’s just not the reality in japan. Akihabara is as much of a japan as Silicon Valley is Usa. At certain level yes but on the other hand not at all.
It was pretty damn hyperbolic. I seriously haven’t seen that much of an anime advertisements anywhere except near konbinis and stores related to them.
There might be an collaboration with some anime and product once in a while but from my experience (and this is an experience of an foreigner living in japan) it’s far from norm.
I will say the demographic deeply into fashion and those familiar with anime girls doesn't feel like it overlaps too much -- yet.
That said, one recent interesting development I saw is VRoid Wear, a collaboration between fashion brands and an anime-style 3D avatar creation tool. The brand Chloma is releasing the same apparel for avatars and real people simultaneously. The avatar-wear is not a mere promotional giveaway for the physical-wear: both are treated equally as products for sale, as they are selling the model data and textures for the former at around $50. (The physical version goes at something closer to $500, but still.)
https://hub.vroid.com/wear/chloma
Anime is used in subculture in Japan, but on TV (except for very specific time windows) and in the streets you dont see much of it. I live in Japan btw.
You don't have anything to backup your assertion (or even have the possibility of evidence, before what you are assertion is what's in the mind of people).
When I browse through a fashion magazine, most models are unknown to me, they might as well be AI-gen.
The people that you know that tries to sell you cloth comprise a small fraction of people-images that you are exposed to.
> Because what people (women and men) are buying is aspiration wrapped in dead plant fibers.
I suppose it's possible that there's a man out there somewhere who thinks like this, but I've never met him and this is the first time I've heard of him.
If anything, most men probably prefer the opposite -- clothing that hasn't been worn by some obnoxious socialite.
> Because what people (women and men) are buying is aspiration wrapped in dead plant fibers
In this case I agree. If someone buys the watch that Elon Musk wears, it's not just about wanting to look like Elon, it's about want to BE him. This effect works even if rationally people know that they are not him. Emotionally, they just want the feeling, however fleeting, that they are him.
> The suspension of disbelief necessary for the social economy to function crumbled as soon as something is too perfect.
Here I disagree and the example of fake Instagram profiles are my counter point. Some of these accounts used real people but the entire "lifestyle" was faked and yet they still had thousands and thousands of followers. What's the difference between creating a fake person to drop into that fake profile and having it be a real person?
The ability of the wealthy to transmit this to their heirs, the tendency of children to enter the same professions as their parents. Social proof-of-work.
How much of our life is just social proof-of-work...
You make a good point and I think the upper-end of models will continue to be in demand (besides, these computationally generated images were trained at least in part from human photos).
However, if I were just an above-average model, where the main function is to display clothes rather than weave a narrative, I might be worried about this technology because many use-cases of models may be in jeopardy from this technology.
In the future we are going to have neural fashion. People will use the knobs of an autoencoder to generate the clothes they like, preview them on artificial models , and then order them for manufacturing.
Fashion isn’t about looking good in of itself. It’s about social proof-of-work. Knowing what to wear and pulling it off isn’t easy. It’s the raison d’être of the multi-billion dollar fashion and fitness industries. Women eat grass all day everyday and go on ridiculous juice cleanses while contorting their body into shapes that would put a pretzel to shame. If the world endures so much pain to look effortlessly good, Why should manufacturers be allowed to forego the pain? If the root of aspiration is making the impossible look like a breeze, then why would anyone want to buy from a computer generated perfect model that never had to feel the pull of a difficult stretch and stare in the mirror with guilty eyes?
The suspension of disbelief necessary for the social economy to function crumbled as soon as something is too perfect. Like Instagram photos. It’s not cool to slap on a filter anymore and stage a perfect photo. It’s too easy now. Just like Prisma was. What’s cool is to put in the work and make something imperfect so that everyone knows that you put in the effort and looked unflappably blasé while doing it.
Most models that are hired today are hired partly on their social presence. Having an audience, even a micro-audience, is essential for getting high paid gigs, because brands aren’t just selling the look; they’re selling the whole package associated with the look. Women like to buy from other women (and men like James Charles) whom they can aspire to. Tweens and teens want to look like the models on tik-tok. Young-adults and grown women want to look like their favorite YouTuber and Instagram celeb. They all want to participate in making something cool happen with their friends.
All of this and more is intrinsically social and human.
All of this and more means that as long as humans buy from other humans, brands will hire models to appeal to what’s most human; sexy, sexy crazy-making envy.