Fashion’s Data Doubles: How AI is Reshaping Modeling Work

Photos by Briana Elledge and Jaka Vinšek 

In March of this year, fashion mega-retailer H&M announced that it would debut a cohort of AI-generated replicas of real fashion models and feature them across its social media and marketing campaigns. In a promotional image, South Sudanese model Yar Aguer poses next to her AI-generated digital “twin” — one of them decked out in a white blouse and the other in a plush cashmere sweater. It’s unclear which image shows the “real” Aguer. “Finally a way for me to be in New York and Tokyo on the same day,” reads a quote superimposed over the image.

Companies like H&M have framed the use of AI as empowering to fashion models, arguing that they can reap its benefits by literally putting their digital avatars to work for them. But in an industry long characterized by major power asymmetries and serious job quality challenges, the impacts are far more complex.

In forthcoming research investigating the role of AI in fashion modeling, we interviewed a diverse group of 21 models to better understand how they experience and perceive the use of AI in their industry, and what it may mean for the future of modeling as a profession. We found that a variety of actors — including modeling agencies, brands, and AI startups — use AI tools to take advantage of existing industry gray areas, and increasingly treat models’ labor as “data” to be extracted for profit. Interviewees spoke about how this heightened extraction is leading to growing economic insecurity for fashion models, as well as propagation of harmful beauty standards—issues that are felt widely but unevenly across the industry. The brief concludes by addressing efforts to strengthen AI governance in the modeling field and beyond.

On Tuesday, in the heart of New York City’s semi-annual Fashion Week, we presented our findings to a room of models and other fashion industry workers. The event on AI in the fashion industry was hosted by the Model Alliance, an organization that promotes labor rights in the fashion industry and was a partner in our research. Alongside our research presentation, other featured speakers included fashion models; creative technologists; leaders from SAG-AFTRA, the Freelancers Union, and Omidyar Network (a funder of the research); and State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, sponsor of the recently enacted New York Fashion Workers Act.

Click here to read a research snapshot highlighting our key findings, as well as a Teen Vogue article featuring the research.