The experienced owner of a modeling agency confessed in an interview that she found this girl extremely beautiful. Only after the second, maybe even the third look did she notice his disproportionately long arms, but also his unusually cold gaze. Of course, he says this in hindsight after learning that the girl who will front the new ad campaign for Spanish clothing company MANGO is a fabrication of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As are the rather indifferent, murky scenes behind it.

It looks like a campaign like any other, which launched at the end of July, and it wouldn’t make any consumer… fall off their chair. But the “revelation” made by the company in this regard gave it much more attention and gave rise to discussions and confrontations between supporters and opponents of this option. A year ago another company, from the field of cosmetics (Dove), had publicly announced that it will never use artificially created images and photos in its own advertisements.

Calmness is required

So is the time coming when expensive models may lose their jobs and with them a bunch of advertising professionals, from photographers to make-up artists? Fortunately, there are calm voices in the field, who seem not to worry about such a thing and reassure those who rose up, protesting the “super-human” nature of this particular campaign, which they consider almost… misleading.

Perhaps because the specific technology is still in its infancy and the cost is estimated as excessive compared to the produced result. The whole process remains highly complex and imperfect, in the sense that its completion requires corrections, which cannot be made without the input of the human factor.

For example clothes “fall” unnaturally on artificial bodies and need to be corrected with compass “supplementary” photography on human bodies. And it’s also that unnatural, icy look. And you don’t have the possibility to… promote on social networks videos of the preparation and process of the photo shoot, with the “making off” that usually gathers many clicks.

It’s all a matter of cost

However, in a related survey, more than 7 out of 10 fashion companies stated that they want to deal more systematically with AI in the future. For this to happen, technology will have to advance, which it is already doing rapidly, supply will increase and prices will fall. Today, the “production” of such a model costs over 100,000 euros, and to this amount must be added a few tens of thousands of euros for each separate “photo”. Businesses certainly think that they can save the models’ fees in the future, but also all the incidental accounting expenses that organizing such a campaign requires, travel, stays in expensive hotels in exotic locations and much more for all contributors.

The final recipient will be the judge

In other words, it seems that the answer will probably be given by cost criteria and not by ethics. And of course the final verdict on the direction that the space will take will be given by the consumers themselves, the final recipients of the advertisement. The question is how they will react, when they know that the model they call to follow or imitate, after all, does not exist.

Can this be perceived consciously or unconsciously as an attempt by fashion companies to “moke” them? And how repulsive or attractive can an artificial effect work based on criteria of “absolute beauty” arrived at by some computer algorithms? A recent study by the University of Vienna showed that after all, AI creations can also cause emotional reactions. But they are less intense than creations made with human hands and humans as protagonists.