
I am a model and I know that artificial intelligence will take my job - elorant
https://www.vogue.com/article/sinead-bovell-model-artificial-intelligence
======
talove
IMO, maybe but unlikely any time soon.

I've lived in NYC for the last decade+. Had many friends that had legitimate
careers as models. Some lasted a year with just a few shoots and a self-funded
trip to Paris fashion week before they quit or went into debt over it. Some
have been going at it for more than a decade and you would recognize if you
flipped through a fashion magazine even semi-regularly.

I also work in media, date someone in fashion and have knowledge of what
actually gets paid to models.

While there are a rare few who find a real career out of it and rise out of
the traps of shitty agencies and contracts, usually by branching out and
establishing a self-brand, none of them that I know made something they can
comfortably retire on just with what we would consider the job of a model.

There are certainly exceptions to this but in general, if you're a fashion
brand, digital or print magazine offering any type of exposure, hiring a model
is inexpensive. Rarely if ever livable wages. That goes for most of the people
who work on sets or for fashion shows.

So with all of that preamble out of the way, what I am getting at is...

1\. Coordinating an AI model, that has to wear these clothes, and that
bracelet, and be on this location, or pictures with this lighting sounds
complex and expensive when hiring a set to produce the real thing is a known
quantity and cost virtually minimum wages. 2\. There are still people who
deeply care about the art of the whole thing and do most of their work for
free to be supported in anyway to keep doing it. I am looking on the not so
bright, bright side here but I'd like to think AI is little more of a thread
than stock photography.

~~~
tux1968
You know a lot more about this than me, but one potential counterpoint though
is Ikea already using ~75% computer generated images in their catalogues. When
the technology is mature enough, it provides a huge amount of flexibility
compared to a photo shoot.

~~~
BearsAreCool
From my own attempts at hobbyist 3d modelling, computer generating a human
with clothes is far harder than furniture. Looking through the computer
generated images for IKEA almost all of them are hard body (solid objects)
with very few soft objects (clothing, tablecloths, etc) and nothing that is
alive. Creating realistic clothing renders is quite difficult, and it gets
even more difficult when a lifelike human needs to be rendered as well.

~~~
jameshart
Consider the incentives fast fashion vendors have, and it seems clear that
completely AI generated product photography is inevitable.

It's expensive and slow to hire a photographer and a studio and a model, and
you have to ship the clothes there ahead of the launch on your website to have
them spend all day getting in and out of different outfits while stylists keep
their hair tidy, then the photographs go to the art direction team to be
photoshopped to match the site aesthetic...

If you can just get someone in the factory in China to snap a photograph of
the latest batch of dresses and tops and skirts as they come off the sewing
table, then you can just send them into a GAN, and have style-matched
'photographs' generated showing the clothes on a selection of different
models, each of whose appearance is perfectly tailored to appeal to different
market segments.

You can have high quality creative on your website and in the product feed to
Google the same day, and start taking orders before the inventory starts
piling up.

Then next week, you can do it again with the next set of designs.

~~~
cyberdrunk
> If you can just get someone in the factory in China to snap a photograph of
> the latest batch of dresses and tops and skirts as they come off the sewing
> table,

Just a simple photo of the garment will not tell you how it behaves on the
body (how "malleable" it is, how it bends, wrinkles etc.) and how it interacts
with the light. Just ask any artist about the nuances of painting clothing
materials - it's a big subject in its own right. I suspect that only shooting
photos on a in-factory models, in various lighting conditions MIGHT be enough
to train the AI.

~~~
jameshart
There’s plenty of training material available - the internet is full of
pictures of people wearing clothes.

~~~
cyberdrunk
Yep, but how is that informative for a particular garment that you want to
visualize? You can't infer, from a corpus of images of random clothes being
worn, how that particular shape and fabric behaves.

------
FearNotDaniel
Nonsense. Maybe the generic low-end catalogue models will be replaced by some
kind of AI but it definitely won't happen in high fashion. I've worked for
some of these organisations and it's ALL about the in-person social aspects of
the industry. Catwalk shows are an event with real people, not because it's
the most effective way to showcase the physical items but because it creates a
buzz that everyone wants to be a part of. The business thrives on parties and
bars and muses and the backstage chaos, frantically pulling everything
together at the last minute so they can glide out there and look serene for a
few brief seconds. The designers and stylists and hair and makeup and
accessories people love working with the girls - even the difficult diva types
who turn up late and think they own the whole show - because it brings fun and
spontaneity and joy and relationship building and uncertainty, the dangerous
unpredictability, just on the threshold of losing control, is a big part of
the energy and many people in the business have their entire 24/7 social life
wrapped up completely in their careers. These techno "models" are a gimmick
that will be used for as long as they grab headlines but in the long run,
fashion people love people (each other, not necessarily their consumers) and -
this may be hard for many IT types to comprehend - the business will always
thrive on those people who are able to walk into a room and move around and
pull faces that grab attention in surprising and unexpected ways, especially
if those people are also _enjoyable_ to work with in a way that some CGI never
could be.

~~~
jeswin
> this may be hard for many IT types to comprehend

Save the condescension, this wasn't written by an 'IT type' or published on a
tech journal.

All industries that got disrupted by more modern technology came up with
arguments similar to the ones you brought up - bookstores vs amazon, brick-
and-mortar stores vs ecommerce, face-to face meetings vs video calls, film vs
digital, newspapers vs internet.

There will always be demand for high end fashion, but eventually it'll get
relegated to a niche.

~~~
MattGaiser
Yes. The "human factor" was supposed to have saved all those industries. Nope.

~~~
skwb
The "human factor" is still why we don't have AI replacing doctors! There's a
lot AI can and should be doing for improving worker efficiency in many
industries, but ignoring "human factors" leads to 737 Max sort of screw up for
deploying automation technologies.

------
supernova87a
Just earlier this week, I was talking with a colleague about all the hidden
jobs that no longer exist because of software. And these are not jobs that
dramatically went away all at once, like a team of longshoremen being cut in
the movies.

Think of all the teams of bookkeepers (yes, actual people who penciled numbers
in books) who were obsoleted by Excel being able to let a store owner do a
calculation/scenario by himself that would take accountants a week to do.

Think of all the secretaries whose work disappeared (or were no longer needed
in proportion to the growing economy) as soon as personal calendar software
and meeting invites became common.

Graphic designers / publication layout experts you would pay because you
didn't have desktop publishing software.

There are more jobs lost silently to these kinds of developments than any
factory being shut down dramatically. (for the US at least)

~~~
HumblyTossed
Cashiers are on their way out. You can walk into any Walmart and see two
people in line for 10 minutes because of the 50 available registers only 2 are
open. Walmart wants to drive people to use the self checkout. I hate it
because invariably something goes wrong and you have to compete for the sole
person manning that section.

~~~
dimitrios1
Self-checkout only stores is exactly what hell looks like. I hate self
checkouts with a burning passion, if not for the sake that I got duped as a
consumer to work for the company, while paying the same price on my goods, but
for the fact that they aren't faster, they certainly aren't friendlier, and
generally cause a certain level of frustration or anxiety for the consumer.

If you care about accessibility and not being ageist, they are terrible for
people with disabilities or the elderly. You will almost see no old or
disabled person using a self checkout line.

As a show of more anecdotal evidence, a recent large grocery store chain in my
large populated city of 2+ million people experiment with going self-checkout
only failed so bad (lost so many customers and people were complaining), they
hired cashiers again to basically scan people's groceries for them at the
self-checkout line. Now they are stuck with the worst of both worlds.

~~~
scatters
Why would you think you're paying the same price? Is grocery shopping not a
competitive, low margin market?

------
adwi
My opinion as a tech-inclined person who works with many fashion/beauty
clients in a creative capacity: fashion, in general, doesn’t understand tech,
and have been consistently 5-10 years late adopting The New.

The industry continues to be centered around still photographs—generally for
the average campaign 90% of the budget/crew will go to the photographs, and
video will be thrown in as an afterthought, even though it is an order of
magnitude more difficult to create—and nearly exclusively those stills will be
experienced on a computer that is told to show that same frame 60 times every
second forever.

My clients are just barely starting to understand how video works. To try to
get them to wade into 3D—and not just as a splashy one-off tool for attention,
but for the actual day to day creation of hundreds of e-comm images/season—I
don’t see this happening for a long time.

~~~
MeetingsBrowser
I am nowhere near the fashion industry, but my kneejerk reaction is that the
industry might be slow to adopt technology because they don't have that much
to gain.

If they are very familiar with still photographs and (I assume) can somewhat
predict how still photographs will be perceived by the market, what is the
incentive to switch to something new?

As a consumer, my guess would be that a video or 3D display would not create a
huge spike in revenue. In fact, if done poorly I could even see it having the
opposite effect.

So what is the incentive to invest time and money into switching to something
new and risky?

\-------

CGI models however seem to be a different story. The cost saving aspect is
clear cut and I as the consumer likely won't even realize anything has
changed.

~~~
adwi
Those are good points, but fashion exists in a logic-adjacent (interesting,
infuriating) intersection of Art and Commerce; on a big set you can almost map
where someone is on that continuum by their order on the call sheet.

On one hand, it makes total sense to ask if embracing 3D stuff, or pushing (to
my mind) a more appropriate use of the digital mediums in which we create and
experience most things will lead to spike in revenue:

If you do it poorly (read: solution looking for a problem) I wouldn’t expect
that to make much of a leap in any real metrics—and if companies are trying to
pass off images on the wrong side of the uncanny valley that’d be more likely
to hurt than help.

But it’s the Art that actually sells the “lifestyle” (read: clothes), and if
you can create a gobsmacking incredible experience that makes people feel
things you will absolutely see that in metrics and earned media and
attention...

There are so many interesting technologies that are widely accessible today
that fashion companies aren’t embracing because 1) they don’t know to look for
them and 2) they don’t understand how they work. Small example: I absolutely
blew a (publicaly-traded) client’s mind showing them a projection mapping
concept... 2 years ago, well after the tools made it a 15 minute job they
could have gotten the savvy intern to execute.

------
Animats
It's already here.

See Marvelous Designer[1] and CLO[2]. These are CAD programs for designing
clothes. They make both a 3D model for viewing and patterns for cutting and
sewing. When design moves to CAD, the designer already has a 3D model before
the clothing is made. So, for catalog photos, there's no need for human
models.

Mostly. Those two companies need better hair shaders.

[1] [https://marvelousdesigner.com/](https://marvelousdesigner.com/)

[2] [https://www.clo3d.com](https://www.clo3d.com)

------
FiddlerClamp
Presaged eerily in 1981 by Michael Crichton's terrible movie "Looker":

[https://youtu.be/2IZfSr891bE](https://youtu.be/2IZfSr891bE) (warning, nudity)

Two additional scenes stand out:

1\. The protagonist watches a prototype perfume commercial with eye-tracking
glasses, and the computer ends up superimposing the closing logo over the part
he watched the most often (this being 1981, I'm sure you can imagine...)

2\. The implication that the computer can determine the 'perfect' poses and
actions for optimal viewer response ("Not enough body twist according to the
computer"), and the physical model having to contort herself to fit the ideal
(you can see a few seconds of this at 0:39 in the trailer -
[https://youtu.be/yoT-r1slAZ4](https://youtu.be/yoT-r1slAZ4))

------
DoofusOfDeath
My first interpretation of the headline was: a self-aware deep-learning model
predicted another deep-learning model to replace it.

~~~
jjk166
Oh cool we live in a Douglass Adams book. Oh no we live in a Douglass Adams
book!

~~~
jacquesm
You have two s's too many.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams)

~~~
karmakaze
Ours is an imperfect copy.

------
curiousllama
This is one of the few "AI will kill X" that I can see (if the article's
claims are true). This wouldn't just impact models - it would automate the
entire shooting process.

Models are cheap, but the overhead of the process is expensive. Hiring a
photographer, lighting person, studio space, model, clothes and backdrop;
coordinating with relatively high-paid internal stakeholders (execs,
designers, etc.); and developing/touching up photos after... Big processes add
up. There's a need.

At the low and medium end, this could totally replace the shoot process.
Presumably, designers would have a basic version of the software in their
standard toolkit (you can see it in a catalog before it's shot - talk about
sales!), so the marginal cost would be 0. There's no differentiator - no
friction.

If the software's output is comparable to a shoot for a department store, the
there's a real solution.

Why would I ever bother with a physical shoot?

~~~
zippy5
Isn't this basically Instagram?

------
Apocryphon
Ah, the realization of this Al Pacino classic:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuAjeuKXX7c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuAjeuKXX7c)

~~~
dredmorbius
For small values of "classic".

------
yelloweyes
Is there really a point to rampant, non-stop technological advancements if the
common people never really get to see the benefits of it? It seems like life
just keeps getting harder and harder for the lower classes.

~~~
Aerroon
But they do get to see them, they usually just don't notice them. Almost
everyone in the developed world has a supercomputer in their pocket that acts
as a flashlight and a video camera as well! Modern cars are far safer than old
cars. They're faster than horses too. A modern combine harvester does the work
of many people, which makes food much cheaper.

There are untold small and big improvements like that that we just take for
granted. GDP per capita roughly doubles in 20 years. That's the combination of
all of these small and big improvements added up on a societal scale. Before
industrialization it could take over 1000 years to see a similar level of
improvement in the life of an average person.

My grandparents had no running water. They would wash in a sauna with water
from a pond or well. Famines were common at that time. People still mostly
used horses for transport. Roads were not paved. Clothing was mostly self-
made. Televisions didn't even exist yet. Radios were for well-off families.
Compare that to today in a developed country.

This rampant non-stop technological advancement is what's making life better.
It's just hard to notice if you don't think about it.

~~~
dredmorbius
And yet: "Looming evictions may soon make 28 million homeless in U.S., expert
says"

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/looming-evictions-may-
soon-m...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/looming-evictions-may-soon-
make-28-million-homeless-expert-says.html)

You caan't live in a video game. You cannot eat an iPhone. Maslow's Hierarchy
still rests on its base, and tens of millions within the US and billions
worldwide live precarious existences.

~~~
Aerroon
Maslow's hierarchy of needs is far from the problem in the US. Many millions
might end up being evicted but the vast majority of them will end up finding
other accommodations. There's a lot of housing available in the US. It's just
not cheap in the places people want to be.

~~~
dredmorbius
Maslow's hierarchy, a friend pointed out a few years back, is best considered
not merely as a set of essential and nourishing goods and services, but
_security in those elements_. The hand that offers whilst threatening,
withdrawing, or threatening is not nurturing but the definition of abuse and
trauma.

Living on a knife's edge, at all times, is not tenable.

See:

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vwfb6/maslows...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2vwfb6/maslows_smartphone_the_role_of_technology_in/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3ey7d1/maslows...](https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/3ey7d1/maslows_swimming_pool_greek_austerity/)

------
jkaving
As others have commented there are lots of costs and logistical complications
involved in a traditional photo shoot. You need to have all the garments of
the outfit, the model, the photographer and all support staff in the same
place at the same time.

Replacing this with all digital models and clothes would be a big cost
reduction.

However, it is still relatively hard to render photo-realistic faces and
there's still a long way until all clothes are available as 3D models with
realistic simulation of fabrics etc.

But there are already solutions being used today that achieve some of the
benefits without using completely generated content.

Looklet[1] provides a system where each garment is shot individually on a
mannequin. This is done by a couple of operators in a custom studio, typically
placed in a warehouse or similar where samples are received. The images are
then combined with other garment images and previously shot images of models
to produce photo-realistic catalog images without the need for a traditional
photo shoot. The web page has sample images and a list of retailers using this
technology.

Take a look at e.g. Saks Off 5th's[2] catalog and see if you can spot the
images that have been produced in this way.

[1] [https://www.looklet.com](https://www.looklet.com)

[2]
[https://www.saksoff5th.com/c/women/apparel](https://www.saksoff5th.com/c/women/apparel)

------
trhway
>For one thing, digital models drastically reduce the environmental footprint
associated with photo shoots and bringing clothes to market. It’s not uncommon
for a model to shoot more than 50 outfits in a single day for an e-commerce
shoot, and many of those samples end up in the landfills. Using 3D models
would eliminate all of that. I spoke to Anastasia Edwards-Morel, a 3D fashion
design expert at the design company CLO, who explained that by using 3D
avatars and her company’s design software, a significant portion of the supply
chain can now happen in a computer.

Model is just a top of the pyramid which is being eaten by software.

One can see though that that may also lead to small tech-advanced (3d
printing/etc.) object "materialization" shops popping up close to consumer.
While you're running your morning run and having breakfast, the outfit chosen
upon waking up (based on looking at weather and your own "feel like") from a
design collection just posted couple days ago (and which you can preview
online as fitted right onto you instead of a model - it may look good on a
model and not on you and vice versa) is getting "materialized" and delivered
right to your door (and your previous ones which you don't need/want anymore
are collected for recycling, refurbishing, donation, etc.).

------
ansible
That article, and the related one about Miquela Sousa [1] now have me thinking
in several directions.

1\. How long before someone plugs in a GPT-3 backed chatbot to handle the
comments for these virtual models? Eventually, AI powered voice synthesis,
lip-sync and animation (helped by a kinematics model) will handle basic
animation, to allow real-time chat with a "virtual model" who can walk and
talk. This could be my big ticket to Internet fame and fortune!

2\. And then someone will want to marry one, a la William Gibson's novel
Idoru. It'll be a real fight when true AGIs are asking for equal rights. But
how about before then when someone wants to extend rights to a fancy chatbot
with an animation package that we _know_ isn't sentient? Will forming a
corporation help or hurt that effort?

We do live in interesting times.

[1] [https://www.vogue.com/article/lilmiquela-miquela-sousa-
insta...](https://www.vogue.com/article/lilmiquela-miquela-sousa-instagram-it-
girl-digital-simulation)

~~~
karmakaze
Why do we even need all that? My exposure to modelling is what I see them
modelling, typically garments or accessories. There's no dialogue in spoken or
written form.

Software has getting/gotten extremely good at mimicry. Natural motion and
facial expressions are in development. I really don't see these things as
being that far off into the future where the human is just moving a mouse/hand
to find the motion and expressions for a specific sequence. Video game avatars
are the best indicator. If you go back 5, 10, 15 years and compare those to
what we can do now then extrapolate 5-15 years.

~~~
ansible
I was thinking in terms of the modern (2020) "influencer" lifestyle, and
making an entire fake online persona, not just generating pictures.

------
Imnimo
I think the biggest potential for AI in fashion will be to allow a customer to
do "virtual try-on" \- see a clothing item rendered on the customer's own
body. Maybe eventually we'll reach a point where it's way cheaper to
synthesize a photograph of a model wearing an item, but how expensive could
those really be to make using a human being and a camera? But if you can
synthesize a model wearing a shirt, it's not that big of a step to instead
synthesize ME wearing that shirt. I can't easily get pictures of me wearing
every shirt in the store the traditional way, so even an expensive, slow or
flawed AI system to accomplish that would still have value.

~~~
elliekelly
I suspect I would buy significantly fewer clothes online if I saw a picture of
myself in them first. The model sells me on it because somewhere deep in my
brain I think maybe those clothes will make _me_ look like the model.

As a customer, I would definitely be better off with an AI Selfie - I'd be
happier with my purchases more often and maybe even get some sort of hidden
psychological benefit to not looking at unrealistic model bodies. But I'm not
sure retailers would stand to benefit much.

------
kipply
there is also rosebud.ai which creates images of clothing on (deepfake) models
for businesses. It's supposed to save time and possibly money on
photographers/models. Really excited for this to become viable for small
businesses <3

------
bayouborne
"What if every time you shopped online you could see yourself in the clothes?"

What if every time you shopped online you could see a version of yourself
you'd indicated you want to be (via a thousand small web interactions) in
those clothes?

~~~
namenotrequired
Taking that idea a step further, what if every time I wrote a comment online I
could see a version of my comment that the person I want to be would write?

------
wwarner
I think the article is hyperbole. 120 years ago, photography changed painting
and today AI is going to change photography. It might be, just as with
modernist painting, that freely available perfection creates a desire for
distilled humanity that can't (yet) be captured by AI.

I think there is a fairly huge middle ground. I wish that REAL models would
digitally represent themselves as 3D meshes, so that I could preview digital
clothing on them. That would really sell clothes man.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> The company uses generative adversarial networks (GANs), which is a type of
machine learning, a subset of A.I.

"Subfield" is more correct but it's interesting that a model (and that's not a
_language_ model) gets the relation between neural nets, machine learning and
AI right, when the majority of the so-called tech press gets it consistenty
wrong, e.g. using AI to refer to deep learning in a kind of reverse-
synecdoche.

------
jfernandez
Wow, so many questions and thoughts this article raises in me.

The biggest takeaway for me was that this technology will likely naturally
evolve to seeing ourselves in the content and clothing we want. Maybe it's a
bit narcissistic to declare publicly, but I have personally seen through my
own work the march towards personalization: what's more personal than seeing
yourself everywhere doing everything?

------
ickwabe
I think many of these comnments are missing the broader implications for the
fashion modeling world in general.

Right now there are a lot of folks that are not models tied into this as well:
photographers, lighting and set people, makeup, dressers, travel arrangers,
fixers, etcs.

I can easily see a near future with the equivalent of Unreal Engine for
modling. All sets, lighting, makeup, AND people in picture will be life-like.
There will be easily configurable random but realistic auto-posing, etc.

The jobs will all become highly comodified down to low paying jobs for long
hours much like the video game industry is today.

And _none_ of the afore mentioned jobs or attendent costs will be required.

As for consumers wanting to "know" the real models and their lives and
advantures? Ok well, I'll get off your lawn grandpa. If current trends contue,
none of that will matter. Folks already form para-relationships with
digital/fantasy people (re: go to any cosplay convention). So the models not
being "real" will pose no barrier in the long run.

------
Daub
On a related subject, most of the images in an IKEA catalogue are now entirely
digitally generated. One reason this is so is to allow for slightly different
content to be delivered country to country (change of wall colour, different
wall furniture etc). Some details here:
[https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/see-how-
ikea-3d...](https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/see-how-
ikea-3d-models-the-rooms-in-their-catalogs/)

What remains to be considered is human judgement. But it won't be long. There
has been some research on automating the aesthetic placement of the camera
within the scene... automatic composition.
[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9112197](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9112197)

As a painter, I certainly know there are rules, albeit very 'floppy' ones.

------
abeppu
A side question: do people want digital models that look like real people?

Shudu and her peers _look_ CGI, and I think that's deliberate. Compare the
Shudu instagram with the output of a modern GAN. I think this is likely an
intentional aesthetic choice. What if part of the appeal of a digital model is
it can look both like and not like a person, in a way that is controllable and
expressive?

A separate question from the aesthetics is, could it be better to "objectify"
something that's already an object, than to do that to a real person?

[https://www.instagram.com/p/BnGmYwzF6nR/](https://www.instagram.com/p/BnGmYwzF6nR/)
[https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/](https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/)

------
alex_g
My first thought at seeing this title was that it was an autobiography of a
machine learning model.

------
web007
The self-description of "Shudu Gram" as "world's first digital supermodel"
ignores the history of Lara Croft's spread in The Face magazine (in Versace,
amongst others), or the likes of Hatsune Miku and more Japanese idoru.

------
Townley
I was skeptical, but while I was reading the article my wife looked over my
shoulder at the photo on top of the article. Unprompted, she asked "Wow, she's
absolutely gorgeous. Who is she?"

We might be further along towards CGI models than I thought

~~~
Talanes
The photo at the top of the article is the author, not the CGI model.

------
felipemnoa
I'm not sure I agree with this. Just like people still like to go to live
concerts I think that people will still like real live models. And knowing
that a real live model has a limited life span will make them way more
interesting while in their prime. Besides, what makes a person quite
interesting many times is not necessarily only how they look but how they live
their lives.

I do agree that AI models may/can become huge. But there will still be plenty
of room for human ones.

It almost feels that if AI models became prevalent the result would be to make
some human models even more interesting.

This is just a gut feeling of course.

------
627467
This reminds me of another article on IKEA's catalogue: at least 75% those
photos are 3D renders[0]

I can definitely see how a major fast-fashion brand can adopt this practice.

Won't kill Paris and NYC fashion week, but certainly will decrease the number
of models that are currently paid for more trivial modelling jobs.

[0] [https://kotaku.com/most-pics-in-ikea-catalogues-arent-
photos...](https://kotaku.com/most-pics-in-ikea-catalogues-arent-photos-
theyre-3d-re-1627713133)

~~~
627467
When I say Paris and NYC fashion week won't be kill I mean: the more artistic
and high aspirational side of fashion will always be driven by humans (IMO)
and humans will want to work with other humans. Not a fashion designer but I
suspect it is hard for you to design clothes for a digital human to wear. I
mean, if you're a game designer maybe you're moved by that. But not sure a
fashion designer would.

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hammock
Modeling is an art form. In my opinion it's about as likely to be taken over
by AI as any other art form.

We have seen AI (or CGI) being used increasingly in film, music and writing,
but the highest forms of these arts are not AI, unless they are AI for AI's
sake (i.e. as a novelty).

A fintech firm might now be producing daily stock summaries from AI. A
Hollywood studio might make use of CGI in its movies. But the highest art form
still makes without AI and will continue so for many decades to come.

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dredmorbius
The ... _value_ ... in at least fine or collectable art (as opposed to mere
mass entertainment) or other assets (wine, ancient artefacts, first editions
and original manuscripts, etc.) lies largely, though not necessarily entirely,
in uniqueness, particularly in status signalling value, as a Veblen good.
Costs of production and provenance here are actually favourable
characteristics and establish signalling capability.

There is at least some likelihood that it's precisely the elements or aspects
which are _not_ automatable, or which are not automated, which will achive
higher status.

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rosywoozlechan
Actual models are already unrealistically attractive and fit so I'm a little
bit worried about generated models are going to make people feel about
themselves.

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supernova87a
The fact that GPT-3 can write a better essay than I can has sent me into a
full blown funk this last week.

edit: *than I can, not "that I can", hah.

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MattGaiser
I can see models being eliminated just because operating with them is
politically dicey and fraught with ethical issues.

So many stories of abuse and mistreatment and them eating tissue paper or
being sexualized at 14 keep periodically occurring that eventually enough
people will just say forget it and use digital creations.

~~~
munificent
Conversely, I can see models _not_ being eliminated. Because the people in
power with money and choosing where to spend it would rather spend it on
pretty women they can creep on than throwing it at a few nerds and a
supercomputer.

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aSplash0fDerp
If you`re one of the parties on the leading edge of the transition to
"artificial beauty", the champagne will continue to flow.

Beyond the fad and hype sales cycles of fashion perhaps art will flourish
again with all of the excess natural beauty that is still in demand. Its still
timeless!

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eplanit
I was actually hoping that at the end, it would be revealed that the article
was written by a bot.

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qwe098cube
i can see that software will also eat the fashion industry how ever not
primarily with AI first but CGI+AI. I can imagine that there will be a
transition from hollywood like VFX artists from film/gaming to fashion if the
demand for CG models is there.

Putting real life actors in AAA games has been a thing for years at this
point, but now the graphics are so advanced that it will look completely photo
real within the next couple console generations. Those game companies put real
life actors in their movies because of the audience recognizes them. Same
thing will likely happen for fashion as well. If you buy famous
models'/celebrities' digital model you can reuse and license that however you
want.

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oh_sigh
This is for the best. It seems especially damaging to the formation of a fully
actualized human to derive your living merely on being born looking a certain
way. Maybe I'm wrong, but is there any particular skill to being a model?

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nitwit005
It seems more like the job of "Model" is being replaced by "Instagram
Influencer". Companies can get attractive people on Instagram (possibly a CG
person) to show off the clothing for them, and seemingly quite cheaply.

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miguelmota
An example of a completely AI generated Instagram "influencer" is Miquela
(@lilmiquela) with 2.5M followers

[https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela](https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela)

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mesozoic
Age will take her job but yeah AI will take away the job of model for the most
part when not at in person events. An AI can't ever really replace the
pheromone response at those I think.

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kingkawn
These are impressive but lifeless, and nobody wants to feel lifeless. It will
not take hold other than as novelty.

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ryanmarsh
Maybe that will help with the model scouting -> human trafficking pipeline.

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agumonkey
the era of artificial / roboticized everything is gonna be "interesting".. we
need to exist for others even if we have nothing to do (as obligations,
survival or else).

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renewiltord
PlaceIt.net does this for lots of things. Love it.

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acangiano
Natural aging will impact you much faster than AI.

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CyberDildonics
Age will come for it sooner than 'AI'

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nabla9
I wonder what happens to porn industry.

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thewarrior
I recently started brainstorming with my brother about what fields are
actually likely to be disrupted by AI technologies that exist today and the
list was quite surprising and unlike what I had seen in the media. The impact
is likely to start in the creative industries. Entrepreneurs feel free to
steal :

1\. Hollywood in the Cloud : The progress of computer vision algorithms, game
engines like Unreal and massive computation in the cloud mean that in 25 years
time you maybe able to produce a Hollywood quality movie by writing code.
Unreal engine will render the backgrounds, Deep neural nets will generate the
actors voices and faces and code will be used to stitch everything together.
This may also include the production of background scores by neural nets
primed on music in similar scenes. The number of people needed to produce a
film will be cut by 10x and we will see an explosion in film making. Tik Tok
is an early example of this.

2\. Digital Models: This is connected to the above. You will also see digital
models being used on billboards and news readers will be replaced by models
like GPT-3 that convert data into narratives and then they are read by digital
newsreaders. They may even make it interactive by reading out the most popular
tweets or having fake discussion between AI models with different
personalities.

3.Lawyers : GPT-3 has given me a lot of confidence in predicting a major
disruption to legal research. You can probably semi automate case research and
you don't need armies of junior lawyers or para legals to fight cases.

4.Accountants: This relies on the continued improvement in computer vision in
the ability to read and interpret printed invoices. More and more transactions
will happen via APIs and be shepherded by digital accountants too.

5.Programmers: I am less sure of how programmers will be replaced but there
are some obvious avenues. Natural language interfaces could make most front
end work obsolete. You don't really need an Uber app if GPT-3 on steroids can
understand exactly what you want and then produce a widget on the fly that
shows you the appropriate information on demand. Most simple apps will be
folded into natural language assistants which means that front end work will
go down. What does exist will be designed with the assistance of AI tools. The
backend work could also increasingly be subsumed into making a knowledge base
that can learn and respond to intelligent queries.

6.Therapists: Smarter NLP models could act as digital therapists. People maybe
more comfortable talking to a digital therapist and not be judged by an actual
person. They can be given digital bodies and voices to make them more
realistic. GPT-3 is way ahead of ELIZA and even in the original ELIZA studies
people became quite attached to it. Technology is making people lonely and
people may turn to technology to fix it.

7.Fake twitch streamers / Cam models: Synthesis algorithms could become so
advanced that some people could become more attractive versions of themselves
and create fake model personas that make a lot of money on websites like
Twitch.

Our economy and education system are probably unprepared for the scale of
disruptions we may see.

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dfilppi
You had a good run

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vinniejames
Influencers will take your job well before AI does.

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EGreg
Can someone tell me why models are so in demand? Can’t people remix existing
photos and so on? There are tons of stock photos now too. It’s not like they
need a new model for every time they show a watch.

~~~
realtalk_sp
What's considered aesthetically pleasing continually evolves over time. There
are underlying trends in physical beauty that resemble what we see in fashion,
art, music, etc. Humans also have a quite a lot of control over much of their
appearance with hair styling, makeup, and (increasingly) cosmetic surgery.
This, combined with the ageism inherent to modeling, adds up to fairly
sustained demand.

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epx
I am not so sure. Copying from a short horror story I wrote myself, "The level
of earthly technology (...) was already advanced enough to create whole movies
using digital actors exclusively, with perfect bodies and unprecedented
beauty. But, for some reason, the masses still preferred flesh-and-bone
actors, in spite of the costs and their erratic performance. The blurry,
undefined line between the character and the human being is attractive by
itself."

~~~
trhway
>whole movies using digital actors exclusively, with perfect bodies and
unprecedented beauty.

lets make one step further - how about digital actors' images adjusted
slightly for any given movie watcher. Can't be done with real people. New tech
isn't always "better" (like in "better horse"), it opens/brings in new
possibilities/capabilities (like in "car").

