H&M's AI Models and the Future of Fashion Marketing

0:08Hello, and welcome to The Debrief from the Business of Fashion, where each week we delve into our most popular BOF professional stories with the correspondents who created them. I'm executive editor Brian Baskin. H &M last week told BOF that it would start using AI-generated digital twins of real models on social media and in marketing campaigns. In an unusual acknowledgement, Chief Creative Officer Juergen Andersen said he knew people would be divided over the use of AI models, but that H &M wanted to lead a conversation that takes the model, the agency, and the best interests of the fashion industry into consideration.

0:49If the goal was to head off criticism, H &M has its work cut out for it, judging from the overwhelmingly negative initial response online and from some industry figures. But Anderson also has a point. Love it or hate it, AI is already reshaping marketing. Some in the industry view last week as something of a watershed moment between H &M and OpenAI's release of a powerful new image generator. Here today to discuss why AI imagery has become such a lightning rod in the fashion industry and beyond is technology correspondent Mark Bain and marketing correspondent Haley Crawford. Hello, Mark. Hello, Haley.

1:28Welcome to the Debrief Podcast. Hey, Brian. Hi, Brian. Mark, I'd like to start with you and your story about H &M, which almost as soon as it came out, was getting hundreds of comments on our Instagram post online, got picked up by global media. There were people talking about it everywhere. Tell us more about H &M's plans for AI models and why it seems to have struck a nerve. Well, the thing that's really interesting about their plan is they are working directly with the models and agencies as well to create these digital twins. The way that works, they basically take a bunch of pictures of the models and it creates this data set that they can use to generate an AI version of them and whatever imagery.

2:10So they're working with the models directly and with their agencies to create these digital twins of the models. And what's unique there is that they are giving the models, according to H &M, ownership of their twins. So it's actually up to the models to decide when and how their twins are used, to negotiate for their twins' compensation. And they can even use them in campaigns and imagery for rival brands to H &M. I mean, I understand what they were going for, which was to say, hey, this isn't replacing models. It's helping them in some ways. That doesn't really seem to have quieted the enormous blowback that any AI announcement seems to get from a fashion brand.

2:50Yeah, so the interesting thing about this is, as H &M itself acknowledges, is that nobody knows exactly how all of this is going to play out. And the big concern, as you can imagine, is that there will still be job losses. And not just among models. One of the big concerns is all the other people who are involved in making fashion imagery, photographers, hair and makeup artists. Somebody even mentioned to me, like, caterers who, you know, provide food on sets. There are all sorts of ripple effects. Now, the response hasn't been entirely negative, right? I mean, there's a subset within the fashion community that's actually quite excited about this.

3:27Yeah. I'm not sure if excited is necessarily the word, but certainly with some fashion tech people whose opinions I've seen, their view is actually maybe H &M has a point here. Maybe they're not doing something so bad. They're trying to address this head on. They know this is coming, and this is actually a realistic way to approach it. We'll see what the approach, whether it ends up actually addressing all the different issues involved. But they certainly sort of commended H &M for trying to tackle the issue in what they saw as a sort of realistic way. At the same time, though, it feels like what H &M is saying here by appearing to bend over backwards to work with models is that they're accepting there will be some criticism, but they're not going to back down.

4:19And that's in contrast to one of the other big announcements involving AI models, which involved Levi's a couple years ago. Tell us about what happened there. So Levi's a few years back announced that it was going to use AI-generated models on its e-commerce site in partnership with this company, La La Land. And the idea there being that in using these AI-generated models, it could show clothing on a much wider range of models, including body types and races and ethnicities, than it would have been able to otherwise. Because in Levi's argument, shooting the same products on like a half dozen or a dozen different models just isn't really feasible.

5:01But by using AI models, they could then show their products on a much wider range of people. And of course, there was a huge amount of blowback there because the criticism there was that, well, why doesn't Levi's just hire humans? And people saw this as another sort of attempt to use AI to put actual humans models, in this case, out of jobs. But obviously a lot has changed. This was just two years ago and a lot has changed since then. Haley, why don't you catch us up to speed here? I mean, what's the difference between announcing or using AI models in 2025 and in 2023? So in 2025, obviously AI has seeped into so many more parts of the marketing landscape, right?

5:43And it's affecting everyone, not just models and people working on photo shoots, but creators of every ilk. There was a recent article over the weekend in the New York Times that spoke about Gen X creatives losing jobs, and it seems to be leading to more of a gig economy. So, you know, jobs that may have taken two weeks to complete are now taking two hours. And so people are having to take on more roles to sort of fill the gaps that may have taken them more time in the past. And I think that's what H &M, they're very polite about it, I guess you could say, but I think reading between the lines of your story, they're basically saying, this is inevitable, this is coming one way or the other, and we're going to try to find the best possible way for all parties to make this work, but this is happening.

6:23I mean, would you say that's fair, Mark? Yeah. I mean, that was their argument. They're like, AI is coming. We should try to find a realistic way to prepare for it. And their solution was to try to bring models into the process. So rather than replacing them, they are including them. Now tell us about the response from models, at least the models not included in this particular initiative. What have people in the industry who work with these models been saying? So a bunch of people have made public responses. The Model Alliance, actually, which I spoke to for the story after the story came out, because I wasn't yet able to disclose that it was H &M working on this.

7:00They put out a statement talking about their concern over this. There was a large creative union, I believe it's called Bektu, that The Guardian spoke with. They put out a statement as well with The Guardian. Nobody, again, knows exactly what's going to happen, but there's a lot of concern that despite what H &M says, the way that this will ultimately be used is to save costs, which means either using fewer people or paying them less. So the criticism among some is that this is just another way to basically pay less, use fewer resources, and actually not use more models in the process, despite this argument by H &M that it's attempting to protect models' rights.

7:42And do models or behind the scenes figures like makeup artists, photographers, I mean, what is their best argument to say, don't use this technology, where a brand that's using AI might say, you know, it used to require five people to photograph a shoot, and now it only takes two because of digital photography and other advances, and this is more of the same? Well, this one makeup artist I spoke with, Mary Irwin, was talking about the way that sort of the magic that happens on an actual photo shoot. And she was describing it as this, this like beautiful communal creative process. And that's, what's really at risk of being lost here is that that communal process of creating fashion imagery.

8:25You know, if you have one person sitting on a laptop typing in prompts, that's not really how it's going to work anymore. And so that's one of the big risks is that, you know, some level of creativity and humanity and in addition to all the jobs themselves, which are also hugely important, will also be lost in this. That does sound a little bleak when you put it that way. And it's also a good transition to, Haley, your story, which opens with the introduction of that chat GPT image generator, which we've already seen you in that flood of Miyazaki imagery, you know, people turning their family into the Simpsons and the Muppets.

9:02I think that that does speak to what Mark is saying, which is that there's something gained and something lost when everyone is using this for everything? Absolutely. So this is essentially ChatDBT's version 4.0, which is a replacement to its much less refined DALI image generation model. So there are fewer mistakes and more people are experimenting with it, which obviously kind of lends itself to that solo, more insular creative production that Mark was speaking to. And, you know, some agencies like VM Group, for instance, use it as a starting point for idea generation and visualization for a concept before sharing it with clients.

9:40There's definitely fears from the creative community around how good it is. I spoke with a photographer and creative director for several beauty brands, Jana Sheptovitskaya, and she essentially fed the platform detailed instructions to recreate photos that she had taken in the past. And she said it executed it almost flawlessly. And then she shared it online and some of her followers were questioning, you know, But she said, you know, this is the way things are going. It's happening. So, you know, thinking of ways to maybe work with it rather than resist it is potentially the way to go. And she's already been approached by a few brands that have asked her to be their AI creative director, in quotes, which means essentially, you know, they trust her eye, they trust her taste, and they want her to be the one to, you know, because at the end of the day, she has the creative vision and the idea and then tasking her with feeding these prompts to ChatGPT to then create imagery in her own style.

10:39So she's theoretically a victim here, just like all the people writing the negative comments on our Instagram posts, but she's saying, I'm just going to roll with it and see where this takes me. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Did she say which brand she's working with? She did not. I know she's worked with brands like Merit in the past, but she didn't specify the brand that asked her to be the creative director. And I think she's equal parts, you know, sad and, you know, somewhat optimistic about it. But yeah, I think she's just trying to roll with the punches a little bit. I'm sure that brand doesn't want to be in H &M shoes and dealing with an international blowback.

11:16I mean, that raises another question, though, which is there's no legal requirement that if you use AI, you have to disclose it to the consumer, right? So in the US, to my knowledge, no, you don't have to do that right now. My understanding is that the EU is actually putting together legislation that would require this. But it is all very much in the works and kind of a moving target, again, as I understand it right now. And I think that's always one of the challenges. It's like the technology is moving so rapidly, it's making its way out into the world already, and the law is trying to catch up.

11:49And I'm sure it's the case that online fast fashion retailers, the ones that are releasing thousands of styles every day, must be using some AI to generate all those model images. I mean, this stuff is kind of trickling out there at the low end of the market. And what I think with H &M and some of these other projects we're hearing about is it's starting to move its way up market. Do you think that's a fair assessment, Haley? I would say so, especially on the back end. I know Coach, owned by Tapestry, uses Adobe Firefly, for instance, to create digital twins of its products, which are essentially virtual recreations of physical items.

12:26So not only can they use it to scale marketing content, for instance, on social media, but it's also used to test designs on focus groups to see what resonates, which can actually be used quite positively to help support product development, reduce waste, and sort of plan merchandising more effectively. And Estee Lauder also said they're working with Adobe recently. And they, much like H &M, were being very careful to say, but it's really ethical. and they actually said we're not going to use it on people, only products. And I think they've avoided some of this by saying that. But yeah, it does seem like it's just kind of making its way into every little corner of the industry.

13:01And then when we talk about the very high end of the market, very few big luxury brands have said they're going to use this in marketing meant for the general public. But it feels like the door's been cracked open just a bit there too. Mark, tell us about the profile you did of the work of Sibyl de Saint-Laurent. So she describes herself as basically like a freelance or independent creative director. And she's worked with a bunch of brands in the past and then got this idea to start using AI because she was like, I have all these ideas that I can never actually make come to fruition, you know, under the real constraints.

13:40And so she started doing these brand campaigns with AI. She's done them for a bunch of brands at this point, like Hermes and Jill Sonder, Burberry, like pretty much you name it. And then actually at one point, Gucci actually reached out to her to ask her to create like a campaign for it. And I don't know that anything has actually happened with that other than she posted it on her socials. But it was really interesting just because, well, when I ended up writing about this and we posted on Instagram, there was a lot of backlash in the comments. But I will say that previously, like when I looked at, so I came across her work online.

14:21And when I looked at what people were saying about her work on her own pages before any of this, it was all really positive. People thought it was like really creative, really beautiful. She manages to, in my opinion, get really good results out of the AI. It's like photorealistic. She's very thoughtful about like all the shades of, you know, she uses and the imagery. And it just struck me as very creative, which is why I reached out to her. And then of course, you know, once you put it in a different context, this being about AI and the fashion industry, people do get very upset. And I think there's a point to be made too, that, I mean, we've been writing about this a lot, that so much of real luxury marketing has come off, maybe lost a bit of its edge, feels a bit cookie cutter, a bit stale.

15:09It's one of the reasons people say that luxury sales have flattened out in recent months. So it's not like just because you have a human photographer and a human subject, you're going to have brilliant art every time. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you know, brands can still be very conservative. If you're, you have a big photo shoot, you have a whole bunch of big names involved, a giant budget, like I can understand why some people would be less eager to take risks. You know, you want to do something that you think is going to connect, but it can also be boring. So to bring things to a close here, let's make predictions about where we think this is all going.

15:53I'll say, I think unlike Levi's, H &M is going to stick with its plan. They factored in, we're going to get a million angry comments on Instagram. Then we're actually going to release these things in six months and no one's going to blink an eye. And then from there, everyone's going to do it. What do you think? From the conversations I had with creatives, I definitely think it's going to spur probably additional creativity on both the human in real life production side and on the AI side, right? You can't only live in an endlessly self-referential cycle of AI image generation, even if AI is piecing different concepts together to generate newness.

16:29I think people who are working, you know, on in real life photography, art, whatever the artistic format is, is only going to get more creative and people are going to experiment more to stand out. And the same will happen with AI. I think people are going to be, there's going to be enhanced competition. People are going to be trying new things. And so that'll also enable people to level up. And I I think per Jana, my conversation with the photographer and creative director, I think she said the trash will take itself out. And so the AI creativity or image generation that's just subpar and doesn't have strong human inputs is not going to be able to survive.

17:04I love that. Yeah, I love that too. So I agree that I don't think H &M backs down. I think they continue doing this. They continue probably trying to talk publicly about it to win over people. And then I'm with you, Brian. I think over time, people kind of like stop feeling outraged and move on a little bit. My guess is what happens is we'll see a bit of a split of like, I almost want to call it like we'll see a lot of like cheap lower end, like really quickly made AI sort of content. And then we will see what you could call like artisanal, like fashion photography with, you know, real humans and photographers and that sort of thing.

17:46in much the same way we've seen in a lot of other parts of the fashion industry, I guess we could say. And I think what makes this so scary, though, is that it's hard to tell right now which jobs are going to be enhanced and, you know, find new applications and which ones are the telephone operators and the, you know, the buggy whip makers of this new era. On that chilling note, let's end it. Mark, Haley, thank you so much for your insights today. Thank you, Brian. Thanks. Please be sure to check out Mark's articles, H &M Knows Its AI Models Will Be Controversial, and The Fake Fashion Campaigns That Show AI's Future in Marketing, as well as Haley's Feature, The Fashion Marketers AI Playbook at businessoffashion.com.

18:28These and other stories are available to BIOA professional subscribers only, and you can find the links in the episode notes. You've been listening to The Debrief, produced and edited by Olivia Davies and Eric Bria. I'm Brian Baskin and we'll be back next week with a new episode thanks so much for joining us and be sure to follow us wherever you get your podcasts