Sarah Murray recalls her first time seeing artificial fashion models. It was 2023, and a beautiful young woman of colour wore a whole Levi denim dress. Murray, a commercial model, said it made her feel sad and exhausted.
The iconic Denim Company has collaborated with AI Studio Lalaland.ai to create a “diverse” digital fashion model for more inclusive advertising. For an industry that has failed for years to adopt diverse human models, the backlash is fast, and New York magazines call the decision “artificial diversity.”
“Modeling as a profession is already quite challenging, without competing with the perfection of the current new digital standards that can be achieved with AI,” Murray told TechCrunch.
Two years later, her worries got worse. The brand continues to experiment with generative AI models, leading to the surprise of many fashion enthusiasts. The latest fuss came after Vogue’s July print edition featured speculation ads with the brand’s typical models: thin, sensual, shiny blonde hair, Pouty Rose Lips. She was exemplifying North American beauty standards, but there was one problem. She has an AI generated.
The internet was busy for days. This is because the beauty produced by Ai appeared in Vogue, a fashion bible that determines what is acceptable and unacceptable in the industry. The AI-generated model was featured in advertising, not in the spread of trendy editing. Vogue told TechCrunch that the ads met advertising standards.
For many, ad vs editorials are unparalleled distinctions.
TechCrunch spoke with fashion models, experts and technicians to get a sense of where the industry is headed now that it appears to have marked approval for technology that is poised to dramatically change the fashion industry.
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They said they highlight questions that arise within the creative industry where AI silicon fingers are touched. And what happens to humans in the fashion world, whether they’re models, photographers, stylists, set designers, etc.?
“It’s very cheap.”
Sinead Bovell, model and founder of the Waye organization, who wrote about Vogue’s CGI model five years ago, told TechCrunch that the “e-commerce model” is under the threat of automation.
The e-commerce model is a way to poss for advertising and display clothing and accessories for online shoppers. They are more realistic and relevant compared to high fashion models whose impressive, often unattainable looks are featured on the editorial spread and runways.
“E-commerce is where most models make bread and butter,” Bobel said. “It’s not necessarily a path to model fame or model fame, but it’s a path for financial security.”

That fact is running in contrast to the pressure that many brands feel to automate such shooting. Paul Mouginot, an art technician who has worked with luxury brands, said using live models is simply expensive, especially when it comes to filming them with countless pieces of clothing, shoes and accessories.
“In AI, you can start with flatlay product photography, place it in a photorealistic virtual model, and place it in a coherent setting to create images that look like a real fashion editorial,” he told TechCrunch.
The brand has been doing this for a while, in a way, he said. The Frenchman Mouginot cited French retailer Veepee as an example of a company that has been using virtual mannequins to sell clothing since at least 2013. Other well-known brands such as H&M, Mango and Calvin Klein have also relied on AI models.
Let me just say it easier, fashion writer and author of the recently published biographies of Gwyneth Paltrow. [brands] Use AI models now. A brand needs a lot of content and just add it up. So if they can save money with their print ads or their ticoquette feeds, they will. ”
AI AD Firm Silverside AI co-founder Pj Pereira said it will really be scaled. All his conversations with fashion brands surround the fact that the entire marketing system was built for a world where four big content is produced a year. Social media and e-commerce have changed that and now they need 400-400,000 pieces. For brands, especially those small, it’s too expensive to keep up.
“There’s no way to scale to 4-400 or 400,000 just by adjusting the process,” he added. “We need a new system. People get mad. They think this is about stealing money from artists and models. But that’s not what I’ve seen.”
From “various” models to AI avatars
As a commercial model, Murray understands, but only to some extent, the cost benefits of using AI models.

She lamented that brands like Levi’s claims AI are intended solely to supplement human talent, rather than being taken away.
“In those cases [brands] “You’ve had the opportunity to line up for open casting calls, but they’re probably aware of the endless amount of models that allow them to dream of the opportunity to work with their brand,” she said.
She believes that such changes will have an impact on “non-traditional.” That was the main issue with Levi’s ads. Rather than hiring diverse talents, they were artificially generated.
Bovell calls this “robotic cultural appropriation,” or the idea that brands can generate certain, particularly diverse identities to tell brand stories.
And while Pereira argues that shooting all the clothing of any kind of model is unrealistic, it does not calm the fear that many diverse models have about what they’re going to be.
“We’ve already seen the use of certain unprecedented terms in contracts, indicating that we are concerned about using the right to use the brand and using what we can recognize as ourselves to train future AI systems,” Murray said.
Some view model similarity as a step forward in the AI era. Sara Ziff, the previous model and founder of the Model Alliance, is working to pass the Fashion Worker Act. This will allow the brand to obtain clear consent of the model and provide compensation for using digital replicas. Mouginot said this would make the model appear on several shoots on the same day, likely generating additional revenue.
It is “valuable when the sought-after model is already constantly traveling,” he continued. But at the same time, every time an avatar is hired, human labor is replaced. “What a few players get means fewer opportunities for many others.”
If anything, Bovell said the bar is higher for models looking to compete with distinctive and digital ones. She suggested that models use the platform to build and differentiate their personal brands and tackle new revenue streams such as podcasting and brand support.
“I’m starting to take those opportunities to tell your unique human stories,” she said. “AI never have a unique human story.”
This kind of entrepreneurial thinking is becoming a table stake across the industry, from journalism to coding.
Room for another view

Mouginot sees a world where some platforms stop manipulating human models completely, but believes that humans share a desire for “for the sensual reality of objects, touching imperfections, and for human connections.”
“Many groundbreaking models are truly successful due to their distinctive traits, teeth, gaze and attitude. This is slightly incomplete to strict standards, but completely appealing,” he said. “That kind of nuance is difficult to erode with zero and it.”
According to Sandrine Decorde, the company’s CEO and co-founder, this is where startups and creative studio Artcare thrive. She calls her team “AI Artisans.” It is used to fine-tune AI-generating models with unique touches of humanity using tools such as the Black Forest Lab Flux.
Currently, much of the decoding of work involves producing babies and children generated by AI for the brand. Employing minors in the fashion industry has historically been a grey area filled with exploitation and abuse. Ethically, it makes sense to bring generative AI to children’s fashion, especially when market demand is very high.
“It’s like sewing. It’s very delicate,” she told TechCrunch, referring to the creation of AI-generated models. “The more time you spend improving your dataset and images, the better and more consistent the model will be.”

Part of the work is building a library of unique artifacts. Decorde noted that many AI-generated models are too uniform, like those created by Seraphinne Vallora, the agency behind Vogue’s guess ads. Their lips are too perfect and symmetrical. Their yaurins are all the same.
“Images need to have an impact,” Decorde said, noting that many fashion brands prefer to work together on only certain models. “Models embody fashion brands.”
Pereira added that his company fought AI uniformity and “intentionally” and warned that as more content was made by unintentional people, all output would return to the computer model and amplify bias.
“We need to encourage that to cast for a wide range of models,” he said. “You need to train [models] It has a wide range of appearances. Otherwise, AI will be reflected by any bias trained. ”
The future of AI is promised, but it’s uncertain
The use of AI modeling technology in fashion is mostly in its experimental stage, Claudia Wagner, founder of Ubooker, a modeling booking platform, told TechCrunch. She and her team saw the speculative ads and said it was technically interesting, but it wasn’t impact or new.

“It feels like another example of a brand that uses AI to become part of the current story,” she told TechCrunch. “We’re all in the process of testing and researching what AI can add, but not just visibility, but there’s real value when used for purposes.”
Brands gain visibility through using AI – and guessed ads are the latest examples. Pereira said his company recently tested a fully AI-generated product video on Tiktok.
“But looking past the comments, you can see that there is a quiet majority, almost 20 times the engagement, which is far more than criticism,” he continued. “The click-through rate was 30 times the number of complaints, and product sales increased dramatically.”
He doesn’t think that AI models will soon disappear, like Wagner. If anything, processes using AI are integrated into creative workflows.
“Some brands feel that they’re good to use completely artificial models,” Pereira said. “Others prefer to start with real people and license likenesses to build composite shoots. And some brands simply don’t want to do that — they’re worried that their audience won’t accept it.”
Wagner said what is revealed is that human talent is central, especially when reliability and identity are part of the brand’s story. This is especially true for luxury heritage brands that are usually slow to adopt new technologies.
Decorde points out that many high fashion brands are quietly experimenting with AI, but Mouginot said many are still trying to define AI policies and are avoiding people who are completely AI-generated at this time. One reason Vogue was such a shock to include AI models.
Bovell pondered whether ads were a way of testing how Vogue responds to the world merging AI and high fashion.
So far, the response has not been significant. It is unclear whether the magazine thinks it will drive backlash.
“Vogue is important,” Odell said. “If Vogue ends up doing editorials using AI models, I think it’s going to make it okay. Similarly, the industry really resisted Kim Kardashian and Vogue featured her. That was fine.”
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