“This AI technology can potentially assist us by supplementing models and unlocking a future where we can enable customers to see our products on more models that look like themselves, creating a more personal and inclusive shopping experience,” the media release said.
AI is all the rage these days (and by that I mean it is enraging a lot of people) so the partnership is no surprise. For all I know, Levi’s could be trying to sell jeans in the metaverse and the whole thing would make some kind of sense (or not, I’m still not clear on what the metaverse actually is and, to be honest, I gotta get the hang of the actual real world before I go look into that other one). But no, that’s not what they’re doing. They’re doing computer-generated images to “supplement” human models to address the fact that their range of “human models” (their words) does not accurately display the diversity they want to display in terms of body types and skin tones, among other elements.
In short, Levi’s sees the need for diversity in its range of models but will literally choose a computer-generated image instead of paying a living human.
I’ve got an idea that I would like to give Levi’s right now for free: how about supplementing your skinny white human models with human models that look different? There are eight billion of us out here - surely you’ll find a good bunch to represent the range you need? Go on, I promise you they exist.
I don’t necessarily have an issue with Levi’s decision to use computer-generated models (actually, I kind of do, but I know that an absolute rejection of AI is not the answer to what is happening in the technology space). What I really do not love is the excuse that they are doing it in the name of “diversity” or even “sustainability” when, in reality, they’re just getting out of having to pay real people.
In the real world, using AI models as a replacement for hiring diverse models means that people who are already under-represented in fashion continue to miss out on the opportunity to be paid for their work, while a company saves costs by using an avatar of someone who looks like someone they’d be paying for the job but aren’t.
Levi’s later came out with an update, insisting it was not scaling back on live photo shoots or its “commitment to working with diverse models”.
It clarified while the AI would give some “business efficiencies that provide consumers with a better sense of what a given product looks like” it should never have been conflated with the company’s diversity policy.
But at a time when we talk about things like the return of the 90s “heroin-chic” (please, I beg you, let’s not), the issue of diversity and inclusion in fashion is increasingly more important. Rather than going forward, it appears we are actually going backwards. According to the Vogue Business Size Inclusivity Report, only 0.6 per cent of the looks shown throughout the AW23 season shows were on plus-size bodies. Not even 1 per cent. As Billie Bhatia wrote in the British edition of Vogue last month, “truth be told, some of those plus-size models were on the cusp of straight sizing. The regression this season is palpable, and for a community of already under-represented consumers, disheartening too”.
With that in mind, a wider range of sizes, body shapes and skin tones in fashion is a wonderful thing to aim for - but are fake people really the answer?
Artificial intelligence presents some exciting opportunities - and we can’t just wish it away no matter how much we want to unsee that image of the Pope in a puffer jacket - but it also raises some real issues that we will need to work out.
Sinead Bovell, model and founder of tech education company Waye, has long been writing about the ethical dilemmas that AI brings to the fashion world, as well as the opportunities. For example, in an article she wrote for Vogue in 2020, titled “I Am a Model and I Know That Artificial Intelligence Will Eventually Take My Job”, Bovell wrote about how digital models help reduce a fashion company’s carbon footprint. She also pointed out the issues of “authenticity” and “transparency” raised by CGI models, many of whom come with elaborate backstories. Ultimately, Bovell says, models - and the fashion industry as a whole - have to adapt to this new reality.
Part of figuring out how to live with it, as Bovell has repeatedly pointed out, is asking the hard ethical questions and looking beyond the avatars to see who is benefitting from the technology and who is getting marginalised further by it.
Until we work that out, we should just pay real people. Now that’s transformative.
