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Category: AI Impact
Tags: AIFashionModelsPhotographyTechnology
Entities: BauticaH&MLevisPaul FlemingShudu GrahamSquarespace
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[Music] AI is already sweeping the photography sector. We already have AI generated head shot, AI editing, generative AI.
Food photos are being taken in AI. And now big fashion houses like H&M are
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creating AI twins of models so that they can have completely AI generated models modeling their clothing and getting rid of entire photo shoots. That means no photographer, no location scouting, no makeup artists, no hair stylist.
We're
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doing away with the fashion shoot. We're going to talk about that.
How it impacts models, how it impacts photographers in the photography industry, how it actually works because we tried it. Yeah, I went deep undercover pretending to be a fashion agency generating my own models using our own clothes and using
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myself as a model, swapping my clothes out. So, I'll tell you exactly how effective that is in its current state.
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We'll get to how it impacts photographers in a little bit, but first we want to talk about how it actually impacts models. Yeah, because
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this was the context of the story. It was actually two stories that I read.
So, one of them was about H&M models, and they're saying they're creating these AI twins for models, and one of the models in the article said, "This is great. Now, I don't have jet lag.
It's
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just me without the jet lag, or I could be in uh on a runway in Paris and at a photo shoot in LA." So, they're some of the models are seeing the benefit because they're still getting paid for their likeness and their agent is still booking the job, but they don't actually have to be there. Um, but other models
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are saying, "Hey, what does this mean if we don't have to be around?" I think there's lots of drawbacks. Like, for sure, modeling is hard.
You have to like often you have to starve yourself or dehydrate yourself to get in shape for a particular shoot. That that's painful if
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you if you want to start a family and get pregnant. That means you might end up couple of years not working, right?
So suddenly you could have an AI model step in and still get paid. But nobody is saying how much are they getting paid?
What portion of their normal rate are they get they getting? I'm sure it's a small fraction of it.
Yeah. And I also
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think that because we don't have laws and regulations around how you can use someone's AI likeness, they're not going to be properly protected. So, one person that's brought up this issue is Paul Fleming.
He's the general secretary of trade union equity, which represents
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fashion models in the UK, and he's saying that it's vital that they have full control over their likeness. They don't right now.
So, these models that are seeing the plus side, they're kind of looking at it with rosecolored glasses because they could be completely
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displaced at this point. Um, he's really pushing for people to start a kind of modeling union for these types of things.
Um, yeah. I also think that the models that are excited are not thinking about everyone else involved.
Like they sit in a chair and have a makeup artist
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work on them, so they know that person's job is gone. Gone.
Yeah. Hair, makeup, styling, set location, like looking up the location, the person working the lights.
A lot more people are impacted. Yeah.
Yeah. And think about all the venues, like the people who manage the
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spaces where photo shoots tend to happen. You don't need those spaces anymore.
You can have it in Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower or on the Greek Isles or on a beach or in an active volcano or whatever you can imagine, right? All with nobody receiving any part of this money.
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Yeah, that's one of the big drawbacks. I I I'm not going to say I'm 100% against AI, but I think any that is implemented and then just takes away 30 jobs.
Why? Especially 30 cool jobs.
Yeah. Creative.
Can it do like sweat
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shop jobs instead of taking all the cool creative jobs? And I always thought models were a good way to connect to to like people, right?
At least you're seeing images of people. We all kind of took it for granted.
We even built up some resentment around models like, "Oh, their body isn't realistic. That's not
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attainable by most people, but these are fake people. They're literally unattainable.
They can be anything. Yeah, for sure.
And in fact, there's already fully AI models that are popular. So, there's a model on Instagram called Shudu Graham and she's just computerenerated, but she has like
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275,000 followers. And she's beautiful.
The pictures are beautiful. I don't think I would have known they were AI if I had just glanced at them.
Yeah. Um they look in very, very convincing.
So, yeah, it seems like this is going to
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happen. For these models that do sell their likenesses, I think it could end up a scary situation really quickly because if you're on set and a photographer asks you to pose a certain way, you would just say no right there on the spot, maybe.
But if you sign away your AI likeness, God only knows what
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the pictures might end up doing. You could end up posing for a brand that you don't like, some, you know, a brand that's doing some something political you don't agree with.
Yeah. uh really it ends up pretty limitless.
And they're saying the model still will have some control, but that's the little specifics
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of the fine print that they they I I doubt it. I'll just say I doubt it.
Well, it's something that they're going to have to get ahead of is what we're saying. And that that's not in place.
The laws aren't in place to prevent some of that kind of iffy stuff from happening. Um, I definitely see how it
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impacts the models, but let's go on to how it impacts the photographers because they're being taken out of the equation. Completely out of the equation, right?
And these skilled photographers have have really contributed to how fashion is shot. FA fashion photography is
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challenging. You have to know how to pose the models in their different outfits.
the photographer really contributes to u exactly how the makeup is done and how the set design is done and you often they end up doing the post-processing and stuff too. So we're eliminating all of these creative steps
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where the photographer doesn't just hold a camera and click it but is contributing creatively and taking their many years of experiencing and using it to to create a a stylized visual that can help sell products for a company. Right.
Yeah. It's just it just seems
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kind of heartless to break down the creative process in that way. And there is fashion photography does have its own storyried history and it's the great that made beautiful images and now AI is just going to be pulling from all of that and kind of like stealing ideas and
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just smooshing it together into something not meaningful. Right.
Right. There's not really meaning behind it.
So, a lot of photographers are going to lose their job for sure. But I think it's going to be more at the low end than the high end.
I think big brands like Louis Vuitton will still insist on
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working with their same photographers that they've worked with for years and decades, right? They're probably not going to immediately change their process because big brands like that are built on being genuine.
They're built on craftsmanship. They're also old companies that tend to be set in their
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ways. I don't think these photographers are going to lose their job, but they might lose some jobs.
Well, Levis is already doing some of it under the guise of being able to add more diversity, which is just like, okay, diversity with
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something that's not real. How is that beneficial?
Yeah, I it's virtue signaling, right? And I think they're trying to offset the negative stigma of AI by saying AI bad, but diversity good, right?
Even though we're not hiring anybody, we're not benefiting the
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community that needs representation, but sure. Um I you know where I see this really taking photographers jobs is like uh catalog work or any kind of work online like catalog uh oh I'm old but also anything on a website where it's
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just you need to see a shirt in multiple colors you know like there's a t-shirt and it comes in 10 colors often you only see it like two of the colors on models it'll be easy to just replicate that shirt on the existing model. Um, so I I think any type of photographer doing
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that kind of wrote work is probably going to be replaced. And we're already seeing a lot also with like any kind of still life photography, like brand photography.
Um, yeah, that's stuff where it's going to be even easier. Yeah.
Food photography is largely
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replaced by AI now, right? You don't need a chef making everything look perfect.
app. If I see one more Facebook recipe where the food just looks unsettling, we'll have to do a whole podcast on how AI has completely ruined Facebook.
Uh, I'm going to get into how
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this actually works because I logged into these websites, uploaded pictures, went through the entire process so I can tell you where things work, where things kind of break down for the state of technology in 2025. But first, we want to thank our sponsor, Squarespace.
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Now Tony, before we get into how you actually used AI, I wanted to touch on something because I did an Instagram reel where I talked a little bit about the AI models and I asked photographers,
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I asked you how you felt and um a lot of people a lot of the photographers were upset and a lot of the photographers were saying they don't want it to happen, but they know it's going to happen and so they're trying to futureproof themselves. Um, one of them
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is our friend Samantha Shannon. She's a photographer.
She does a lot of head shot. And so I don't want to be all doom and gloom.
I think that there's a lot of ways that photographers can use AI to help their business and also a lot of
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ways where photographers can think about this in a way where that you can kind of pivot your photography career to be more AI proof. So, one thing that comes to mind for me with AI is I like AI editing because when I do portrait shoots of people, I'm not replacing them with a fake model, but I am replicating my
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edits in AI. Um, so that it doesn't take three days for me to edit a shoot anymore.
It takes like an hour. I'm all for AI that makes photographers more efficient.
I'm not help photographers. That's great.
Replace photographers. Not
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for that. I'm not replacing editors.
I'm not replacing anyone. I'm streamlining my workflow.
So, that's something that you can do. That means that you can charge less money.
If your shoot is taking a day or a couple hours instead of a week, then you're able to
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make more money um by and lower the cost for your clients and maybe make that more appealing. I I think a lot of fashion companies will still want to hand everything off to somebody.
It's very easy to use these websites, but I think they would still rather say, "Here's a new lineup of clothes, make
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some pictures for me, and send it back to me." So, if you already have a connection because you're already shooting fashion, perhaps you can expand your business, offer some services at a lower cost by acting as the AI interface. It's so hard.
It's like, do you do that and risk replacing yourself? Well, someone in the comments also said
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that their dad refused to use Photoshop as a photographer and then lost his job because he wouldn't adapt. So, it's like this fine balance.
We don't want to totally give up and not push back a little bit, but we also don't want to get left behind and not have a job
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anymore. So, there is this fine balance of adapting um and finding new ways to shoot.
I would say like any kind of product photography is probably going to be shrinking, but stuff like weddings will probably still be popular. I think so.
I
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tried two different websites. I tried the new black and Bika and both were extremely easy to use, requiring absolutely no technical skills on the part of the user.
They both offered a variety of different services. For
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example, you could take an existing picture of a model and replace the outfit. The way that works is you upload a few pictures, which could be from this year's catalog, and then you could upload next season's clothes, and
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suddenly you have a whole set of the new season's clothes on old pictures that you already know are successful, and it's only taken you a few minutes. I think this works pretty well.
The pictures of the new clothes can be pictures of the clothes on a mannequin.
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They could just be laid flat or they could be somebody wearing the clothes, but just a casual phone shot and then it will overlay them. The resulting pictures were never perfect in my mind knowing that they were AI.
I looked at them and I was like, that's just not
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quite right. Like I rendered pictures of our t-shirt and it got it got the color wrong and I then had to go back into Photoshop and fix that.
Anyway, you also might have to do a little bit of photoshopping to correct the sheen of the fabric to make it more realistic.
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So, there's still going to be some editing done. I don't think you necessarily get a finished product.
There's still going to be a pipeline. The one I did looked horrible.
Some of them do look bad. And also, you have to account for this whole thing where like if you're wearing long sleeves and you
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want your model to wear a t-shirt, it's not good at that. which made me think there's a possibility that they'll be using this software by like having all the models wear a nude bodysuit and then just putting clothes on them.
I think that's the the most effective way to do
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that. I think we also need to acknowledge that pictures don't have to be perfect for them to be successful.
You have to get somebody's attention. You're trying to get clicks often.
You know, you're showing fashion in a little ad in the corner and you just want to catch somebody's eye. And I think AI models are going to be extremely good at
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that because you could generate 10 different models, 10 different poses, and then just run them through an ABC algorithm that determines which one gets the most clicks for a given outfit. And that can increase the click through rate.
On the advertising for the
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AI fashion website Bautica, they said that uh they saw an 30% increase in ad click-through rates. This is compared to actual fashion photos.
That makes some sense because AI is going to be able to generate the most perfect background
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that you want. But also, where are they seeing this increased click-through rate?
Because it's probably not it could be sites where the pictures are really bad. They don't have a good photographer, the lighting's bad, the model's bad.
Yeah. So, absolutely, they and they provide no data to back this
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up, but at the same time, I believe it. They're not saying a thousand%.
I think 30% is a realistic number. They're also saying that they're seeing a 12% greater average order value.
So once you get somebody onto your website, these AI models might help people sell the products a little bit better. I this
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this kind of infuriates me because people might buy more of the products, but they're not actually seeing the products. Yeah, I was concerned about that too as a consumer.
Like if you see AI generated clothes, you're not actually seeing how it hangs, if it's stitched nicely, what the fabric feels
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like in a picture, we're already removed now that we don't do as much in-person shopping, but now we're not even seeing real clothes. It's It's hard enough because I'm so accustomed to seeing, you know, a fashion model bodybuilder wearing the shirt that I want to buy and that doesn't really tell me how it's
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going to hang on my body. But now you're not even seeing the actual clothes.
You literally don't know. you're trusting whoever processed the pictures to take the time to make sure that it it accurate accurately represents the real clothes.
I think as this extends, we also might see poor quality clothing
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being sold online because now they don't even have to make it look good once in the catalog. They can put out some real crap, some real wrinkly, poorly stitched up stuff because the picture itself is fake.
Yeah. And how many people are going to be willing to actually send it back once you get it?
I so I do think it
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can be a little bit of a spiral. This segus well into who actually benefits from all this AI generated model stuff and it's just the brands.
That's the part that really stinks. It's eliminating a bunch of jobs for models, photographers, everyone else on set.
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We're not going to get better quality clothes out of it. The only people making money are the ones that would have to pay for the photo shoot in the first place.
So Levis's and H&M and the other brands that said that they're doing this, they're just thinking, "Oh, great. When we report to our
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shareholders, we get to tell them we're making more money because we're not hiring a bunch of people." I'm grasping at straws here trying to find some bright side to this, but there are thousands of independent fashion designers on places like Etsy, people
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who love fashion, and they're drawing, sketching things out, and cutting them up and sewing them together themselves. and they probably don't have the budget to find a model that where they are in their location.
They probably don't even have any models available, you know, if they're in the middle of Oklahoma somewhere, much less a gorgeous
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location. So, I think it might level the playing field between indie fashion designers and the big places that have the budget for these things.
So, maybe that's a great point, but I just want to point out that the Texan took a real shot at Oklahoma.
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No beautiful spots in Oklahoma, huh? No.
Why does Texas not fall into the Gulf of Mexico? I knew Oklahoma I saw your Oklahoma.
Okay. Your Oklahoma hate there.
But yeah. Okay.
That is like one bright side. If there is a very small
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independent fashion designer who can't afford any models and has no friends and they don't have a phone with a camera. Where do we go from here?
Um, let's talk about where all this goes in the future because right now the process
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is still very much wedging itself into the existing process. Normally with a catalog, you'll have five pictures of a shirt on a single model in different poses.
And that's kind of how it's geared up. You upload your shirt, you pick a model, and it'll generate a set of photos in different poses.
But I
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think the near future is probably going to be much more customized models. Each set of photos right now took about 10 minutes to render, but that number is going to go down.
These are going to be rendered faster and faster. And I think pretty soon we will see a given shirt rendered in a hundred different models.
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And the the internet algorithms will figure out what your particular preferences are. Whatever models you're most likely to click on, those will be the models that it chooses to represent in the clothing that it thinks will be most appealing to you.
So, I might see
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pictures of dudes with white hair, and you might see pictures of women that look like you. I might see a bunch of poodles and sundresses.
It's not going to make sense. Whatever makes you click will actually appear.
I promise. And one step beyond that, something that I think
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works pretty well today is to upload pictures of yourself. Could be you on your couch or you in your backyard.
And everything in the picture stays the same except for your outfit. It just replaces the outfit.
puts in any wrinkles, the bend in the knee, it puts your pants on
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and it makes a pretty realistic picture of you in a different outfit. And that could be kind of cool if you went to the H&M website and all the clothes there were shown on you.
That's not far off. That's 2026,
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2027. But that will come.
Now we're changing it. If I'm the model, that's different.
Finally, the pants might fit. Well, except you'd have no idea, right?
Because the clothes didn't actually put on you. I guess I was imagining that you
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would put in your measurements as well. Mhm.
But probably maybe not. I don't know.
We'll see. How do you all feel about this if you're photographers?
I did ask people and people are a little fearful, but I'd like to hear your responses in the comments down below.
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Can you find a positive side to this? We're trying.
I'm trying not to be all doom and gloom, but this doesn't seem great for us. Um, let us know.
And if you like this podcast, there's more available at the Picture This Photography Podcast. You can get it on Spotify.
You can get anywhere podcasts
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are available. And thank you Squarespace for making this podcast possible.
If you want your own website, store, portfolio, gallery, a place to show off your AI models and clothing, you can make it happen at Squarespace. It's really fast, easy.
Try it out for 14 days. No trial needed.
Go to
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squarespace.com/chelsey and use the coupon code Chelsea to get 10% off.