Cameron-James Wilson – Founder & CEO of The Diigitals Part 1

0:02Cameron-James Wilson: Welcome to the Business of Modelling, the podcast where we explore the fascinating world of the modelling industry. I'm Tessa Dewing, Managing Director of Sandra Reynolds, a commercial model agency celebrating its 50th year of business. Today we're in Weymouth with Cameron-James Wilson, the British digital artist and founder of The Digitals, the first all-digital model agency. A former fashion photographer turned 3D pioneer, Cameron created Shoe Do, the world's first digital supermodel. Their journey is such a fascinating mix of creativity, persistence and innovation that we've decided to bring it to you over two episodes.

0:43Cameron-James Wilson: In this first part, we focus on Cameron's early years from working out of their mother's garden shed to shooting for leading fashion brands to discovering 3D art and creating Shoe Do and other digital models. Alongside that story runs a wider issue, the rise of AI. There's growing debate and anxiety about what it means for jobs, ownership, representation and even how we experience culture. For years now, we've been giving away our data and images without a second thought, clicking agree without ever reading the fine print. So next week in part two, we're going to explore those questions directly with Cameron.

1:23Cameron-James Wilson: But first, here's how his journey began.

1:29so I grew up here in Weymouth um I spent pretty much you know the first 15 16 years of my life here and then I went to the Arts University in Bournemouth and I studied there and straight at 18 I went into being self-employed as a photographer um and I moved up to London when I was 20 uh and I spent you know a few good few years there as a fashion photographer it was all quite straightforward. I was very young to be a fashion photographer as well. You know, people would often turn up on set and they'd be like, oh, where's the photographer today? They thought I was the assistant. And I'm like, no, it's me.

2:04I'm here. I had, yeah, some great years working for some really great brands like Gossard. I did a lot of jewellery as well with Garrard and Fabergé, makeup brands, all sorts of commercial jobs, working with incredible models like Gigi Hadid, the Yomi Anderson. It was a long, long career, but it was one that I was never fully satisfied with.

2:28Cameron-James Wilson: OK. I'm not really like a fashion person, if you know what I mean. I was never really that in love with the industry. And where did the photography come from initially? Like, was it photography you did at university? So both my parents are hairdressers. So I grew up in the hair industry. But my mum told me that I couldn't do hair. She was like, no, I'm not going to teach you how to do hair. you have to like go out and do your own thing. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, it's a bit disappointing. Now I look back on it, I'm like, I'm probably going to be a pretty good hairdresser. So, but I, yeah, went out and did my own thing.

3:06I did want to get into illustration, but the arts college wasn't that keen on it. They told me to choose something else. So I chose photography in my second year and I really fell in love with it. I really enjoyed it I liked how quick it was you know to see results and I enjoyed all the different aspects of photography as well like makeup and styling and things like that allowed me to kind of use all of my skill set I guess and I quickly you know I got in contact with Premier in London and they would send me girls every week and I built my portfolio that way

3:41Cameron-James Wilson: and did you assist or did you just go straight into booting straight into booting yeah I was self-taught I didn't really know a ton about photography when I was shooting so I would hire a lot of assistants and they would do my lighting and stuff but I never really cared I never really thought oh I need to you know I was much more about the artistic side of it and getting the results at the end of the day that you know over the years you learn it all anyway like now I'm like very confident with everything but in the beginning it was a lot of learning um through just kind of practical kind of effort.

4:18Cameron-James Wilson: How did your photography training then inform your approach to 3D art? What inspired you really to experiment in that? I love to draw and as a photographer as I was retouching I would probably not draw anything for about a year but then when I did come to draw something I drastically improved my drawing skills through retouching, through photography, through understanding lighting and everything. So everything is connected. So when I moved into 3D, all of that knowledge and skill of working with photography, especially the retouching, because you start to understand how skin should look and where light should be.

4:58And it just came very, very naturally to me. And I created Shudu after only three months of starting to learn 3D. It was very experimental. And that's the kind of person that I am. I like to learn new programs. I'm always on the lookout for new things. I mean, now with AI, for me, I mean, it's a great playground. It's a great place to kind of experiment with lots and lots of different things. So, you know, I'm really enjoying the space much more than a lot of other people that I kind of see.

5:33Cameron-James Wilson: And now, so introduce us to Shudu. So Shudu is my baby, really. You know, I created Chudu about eight years ago now, seven, eight years ago. And at the time, I was just trying to create an image of a beautiful woman. I just had this image in my mind of this gorgeous woman with these gold necklaces on. An image that I'd always wanted to take as a photographer, but it was always difficult to get a necklace like that. Or, you know, it's just something that I always wanted to do. And when I published that online, she went viral. Shudu was a 3D character. She didn't exist. But when I posted her online, people believed that she was a real person.

6:15And for me, having only done 3D for about three or four months, you know, people thinking that your work is real was a huge compliment. And obviously it was, there was a lot of other kind of moral issues and stuff and ethics with it because people were actually believing this was a real person. You know, this had the potential to be very deceptive. And especially with Shudu being, you know, a dark skinned black woman as well, having kind of me create her and then not necessarily being honest about the fact that she wasn't real, you know, caused a lot of controversy in the beginning. I mean, I didn't know what to do when she started going viral.

6:53I'd never had anything like that happen to me. And, you know, my friends were telling me, no, keep it going. Don't tell anyone. And they kind of saw the funny side of it. I saw the kind of other side of it and thought, God, you know, I know what people are like. They're probably going to twist this and twist it. They did. But there was, yeah, there was nothing bad.

7:11Cameron-James Wilson: No. In my intent. So she was then labelled really world's first digital supermodel, which is awesome. Yeah. Created in Weymouth. Yeah, exactly. going viral is one thing um once and then but then being reposted by Fenty Beauty in an image and she got caught for a million likes and and just so many comments and everything and did Fenty think she was a real I think Fenty did think she was a real person because they eventually took the image down but in that time it got caught for a million likes and it was one you know a really big picture on their Instagram and uh for me I thought wow you know this she has the potential to really go far.

7:50Cameron-James Wilson: And I've read that she was based initially on a South African Barbie doll. Yeah, yeah. To include in that. Yeah, the dolls here in our studio. She's called Princess of South Africa Barbie. And she is one of the very, very few dark-skinned Barbies that are African. A lot of the Barbies that are black are African-American. But she's truly a South African princess. And I was just very inspired. She has short Afro hair. She's very unique for a Barbie, you know, in terms of beauty standards. And I grew up being inspired by incredible models like, you know, Alec Weck. I absolutely love Alec Weck and, you know, Grace Jones, incredible beauty, beautiful women like that.

8:34So, yeah, for me, Shudu was just very, very, a very natural creation for me. I didn't really think too much into it when I was creating her.

8:43Cameron-James Wilson: So there wasn't really a choice, you know, whether that was an aesthetic choice or a deliberate sort of cultural reference that wasn't even in your mind. I mean, the necklace is definitely a reference to the Enderbelly tribe. They wear these very, very long, elongated gold necklaces, which represent beauty. I find that very interesting how different people culturally around the world have different beauty standards. And all throughout my career, I've kind of been very, very interested in different standards of beauty and how individual people see beauty. So when Fenty posted that image, how did that make you feel?

9:24So it was my sister's suggestion. She was like, I think you should tag Rihanna and Fenty in one of your posts. And we got up one of the lipsticks, which we looked at the colour and everything. We made sure that it matched. And then I did it. I did all the work and I thought, you know, I tagged them all. I went to bed, not thinking much of it. And then the post came out and I was I was just really excited. But I was really excited for my sisters as well, like because they were kind of on the journey with me. And these were brands that they really were excited about. So for me, it was like also seeing my sister's excitement, you know, made me really, really happy.

10:02Cameron-James Wilson: And at this point, did you see this as a career path or at this point, was it just still kind of experimental? I saw the potential for sure, just because of the way, you know, you could create these images. You know, I could create these incredible images just in a shed in my garden at any time of day. You know, I didn't need a moral hair, makeup, all of those things. So I saw the potential of it. But it wasn't until later when I worked with Valmarm and created a campaign for them that, you know, I saw the potential in it. And, you know, suddenly I was being paid more to do this 3D work than I had ever been paid to do my photography, you know, which was incredible.

10:43And I was doing all of it as well. You know, I was doing all the production. So I kind of handled everything. It was really, really interesting to suddenly, you know, go from photography, which I'd worked in for eight years to try to make a name for myself. And then now I was doing this and it was like all of a sudden, you know, I'm famous for kind of doing this thing. Do you know what I mean?

11:05Cameron-James Wilson: How quickly did you go from that first image then to global headlines? I think it was about a year. I think it was about a year because shortly after Fenty, I did an interview with Harper's Bazaar US. and I was so nervous. They were like, is she real? Is she not? And I was like, no, she's not real. And I was really nervous. I'd never had any media training. I'd never really been in front of the camera. I was always behind it. And they took my words. They didn't, Harbors Bar didn't really twist them, but somebody read the interview and kind of twisted some of what I said. It caused a lot of backlash, but with any kind of backlash you get, I mean, you get popularity as well.

11:46you get people defending you that you know as many people who are just like you also think wow what you've done is beautiful and so it just kind of propelled everything to this level of discussion and virality again which was interesting but a very difficult time for me as well

12:09Cameron-James Wilson: people often assume i think that shudu is an ai model but she was actually created using 3d software. Can you explain the difference between a 3D digital model like Shudu and an AI generated model? Yeah, so we do now use AI in our work, but Shudu as a foundation was created in 3D. And 3D is the same technology, you know, when we talk about 3D models and things like that, we're talking about the same technology that goes into CGI that we see in movies, in Hollywood. And what we created with Shudu was a fully 3D representation of a person. So almost like a game character. Whereas when you have AI, it's just images, there's no actual physical body.

12:53And the problem with AI is it kind of tends to change and shift between from image to image. So you never get a truly consistent representation of that person. Whereas with 3D, you have a fully, you know, fully realized character. And no matter what angle you kind of take that picture from, it's always going to look like the same person. It takes a lot more work to make a 3D model you know um but in my eyes I think I think you know the combination of 3D and AI is incredibly powerful um I think that's when it starts to shift into true kind of hyper realism like you can't tell what's real and what's not you know so yeah I think there's a lot a lot of people out there at the moment that are creating AI models but not so many people that create 3D models.

13:42Cameron-James Wilson: Sure. So I guess the 3D element of it gives you the permanence and the consistency, and then you can use AI to kind of enhance that. Exactly. And it also gives you the intellectual property rights as well. Yes. So at the moment, you can't really kind of copyright a character that you've made with AI. It doesn't really belong to you. You know, it kind of belongs to the AI program, unless you build your own AI. Not many people do that. But when you create a character in 3D, you actually own the rights to that 3D model. So then, you know, no matter what, you always retain the rights to that.

14:24Cameron-James Wilson: Going on to your model agency, The Digitals, you literally started that in your mother's garden shed. Can you take us back to that time, you know, where the idea came from to start an agency and what those early days look like? so it was kind of a frenzy at the time it was really actually quite crazy um digital modeling had kind of exploded and everything was popping up at the moment you know people were creating new digital models and people were creating this and it was kind of like this this race um to to do the do something first you know what year was that this was in i think 2018 or 2019 i think it must be in 2018 now and everyone was kind of racing to do new stuff little mikaela was kind of like our competition and she was always doing something new and something different so i had i just had this feeling that somebody was going to create a digital you know modeling agency digital characters and i just kind of knew it was going to happen like any moment so i said to tom i was like my colleague tom i said uh we need to create this agency now tonight like i have a feeling they're going to announce something tomorrow or the next day and who is tom how did you meet tom tom is my best friend but also my colleague who i've worked with for um over five years now and we're kind of almost um like very very similar in and what we can do he's also trained in photography um he's also trained in 3d now ai um but he focuses more on the fashion and the dressing and i focus more on the kind of lighting and overall kind of creative direction if you know what I mean so we worked really really really well together yeah but yeah so when this was all kicking off I spoke to Tom I'm like we need to make this agency today and we did we literally sat there and overnight we were like rendering everything we were like buying I was literally buying the domain name like in that one night we we made the digitals and we launched it the next day and straight away it just got like loads of press around it you know people talking about it asking us uh you know the world's first you know modeling agency for digital models like you know it was it was a fun time it was like we were doing things not just because we wanted to make money or thought about the money side of things we were doing it because it was groundbreaking and it was fun and it was innovative you know we and disruptive and i just thought like oh what what would happen in a world like blade runner you know what would happen in something like that like let's do that you know um and we did and we made it happen and it you know we're still here today like seven years later so so yeah and how did you promote that how did you go about getting people letting people know that you were out there i mean we didn't really need to do any promotion it was all uh you know because it was such a small industry at the beginning with 3d 3d fashion uh we were you know had lots and lots of contacts i've always had great managers.

17:23My manager, Jennifer Powell, she is in LA and she's represented me for seven years now. She represented me right from the very beginning and she's a very, very good friend now, but she's also very well connected. She herself is an innovator in the space. She is responsible for kind of looking into monetizing influencers and she was one of the very first people to do so so um in the beginning it was all about blogs and she just she kind of thought you know every time they mention something in their blog it's like selling out so then she built like business partnerships from there so she's a a female innovator that I very respect very much

18:13Cameron-James Wilson: you've worked with brands from Balmain to Louis Vuitton Samsung Mercedes how did those first collaborations with those big names come about? They would just reach out to us. I mean, Balmar was very unexpected because it came at a time when I was facing a lot of criticism. But I was also doing a lot of interviews and I was talking about this lack of representation in 3D spaces that a lot of people didn't really realize. And as a 3D artist, I was very aware that there weren't actually many characters like Shudu in games, in movies and things like that, where 3D characters kind of were being used.

18:53And actually, when I came to create Shudu, it was quite difficult for me to create a character with deep, dark complexion, short, afro hair. You know, there weren't a lot of options available. And I was trying to kind of raise awareness of the fact that, you know, if we want better representation, we need to make these tools more available for anyone to create any character they wanted. So they heard that, they reached out, and they asked me to create two other characters to complement Shudu so I created Margot and Z who was a Caucasian model and a Asian model to show like you know you can kind of create different models and things like that so it was a really really great collaboration because they were actually listening to some of the stuff that I was saying and kind of wanted to empower that empower me and because of that yeah then I went on to do lots and lots of different brands after that I think once you kind of so Balmong were really the ones that you felt like put you on the map yeah yeah exactly and um and in the beginning as well we worked with Vogue Australia uh they were real you know those couple of clients really propelled you to a level where lots of other clients felt comfortable booking her um and then from then it kind of was just uh you know a snowball kind of effect really and which collaboration would you say has been the most surprising surprising uh when we when kfc reached out to us and uh we did an image of one of our models danny uh with the colonel because uh they they made a virtual model version of the colonel right which kind of makes sense yeah which was really fun they didn't keep him going for that long i think he took over their instagram for like a week but it was it was fun I wish they had kind of kept on it but you know with these big agencies they move on to the next thing every week.

20:43Cameron-James Wilson: So can you talk us through Cameron like the basics of how a digital model is actually created? Recently I'm actually doing my master's at the moment and as part of my master's I'm creating three characters they're more fantasy characters but I'm using the same technique that I used to create Shudo to create them. You start off with some references of how you want the character to look I mean now with AI it's so much easier because you can kind of get you know generate exactly kind of the look you want then I use those references to then create a 3D version of that character and I use a program called Daz 3D and it's kind of like the sims where you piece together the character you don't have to necessarily build it from scratch you know you're you're kind of shaping it uh you know there's a slider if you want more muscles or this or that you know it goes into a lot of detail but you know it's much easier to use than actually sculpting it yourself and you kind of mix all of this together and then eventually create a character that you're happy with once you then have that character base you know you've got their skin tone their hair and everything sorted um you can then start to dress them in 3d clothes or um you can train an ai model with their likeness and then you can generate more images of them as right so things have changed a little bit since i created shudu but but yeah and then they're a brand at the end of the day aren't they once you've got them so would they then evolve over time definitely i mean shudu since we created her she's changed a lot you know because um new things come out new ways of rendering new ai programs and and they all slightly change and tweak her you know they're not uh she's not exactly the same as she was when i first created her um so she does evolve and when people ask does she age she does age in her that was going to be my next question yeah yeah in her own way but it's kind of more of an evolution like you said it's it's it's not necessarily like lines and wrinkles I mean in the beginning we did add a lot more detail to her skin so it became a bit more textured and when you zoomed in you could see more pores and things like that so she did kind of get more skin detail it wasn't necessarily like an aging uh you know with lines and things like that.

23:00Cameron-James Wilson: So when you're working with these characters that you've built in 3D and you're pulling them into AI, what are the best programs you found with AI to do what you want to do? So a big program that we use all the time is called Open Art and it's a platform for different AI models. So when I say AI models, I don't mean models as in people models, So meaning models as in kind of program sort of thing. And is that anything to do with OpenAI, ChatGPT? No. It's a completely separate company. Completely separate. It does have access to like ChatGPT's tools. Yeah. It has access to a lot of different AI tools all in one place.

23:43So you don't have to have like a million subscriptions because that's what we were finding. It's like we were subscribing to like 10 different programs. It's very expensive. And the process is quite simple. once we've trained it, you know, we just kind of generate images. And, you know, when they're for ourself, it's very easy. But when it's for a client, you know, you have to make sure the clothes look the same. And that's where things get a bit more technical.

24:11Cameron-James Wilson: Do your characters have backstories and personalities? I'm guessing you build all that in when you're creating them. Yeah, so Shudu has a writer called Alma Padu. she is um her writer she's kind of developed uh her entire story yeah she's she's done many interviews as her she's written her whole thing we we like to kind of experiment with the fact that she is ai you know we like to not kind of shy away from that in her backstory as well like in the beginning we talked about do we kind of talk about her as if she's a real person like you know, like a South African model or something. But really, as we've kind of developed over the years, she's kind of talked to her about her more as she really is as a, you know, 3D AI model.

24:59Cameron-James Wilson: And I guess she has a fan base. She has how many followers does she now have? It's over 230 ,000. And what we're seeing at the moment is that it's quite a lot of AI models are now her fans as well. So, so, yeah, so I get messages from them all the time. like their creators obviously saying like you know thank you for inspiring me to do this and uh i've literally seen like hundreds and hundreds of new ai models popping up right so some are good better than others some are some of some are you know better than others the majority i would say are created by men and the majority i would say are more focused on more of like an only fans kind of making money so i have some kind of concerns about how uh this technology could lead to the kind of commodification of of women's bodies a lot more um you know because one thing about only fans is that it allows women to monetize whether you agree with it or not um their assets their bodies uh the moment the moment then that men then start to uh generate images and monetize those you know it takes that away from from women and you know that's something that i i've been accused of doing uh with with shudu but i uh at every turn i've included women in the kind of creation process you know i've made it a complete um i've made it a policy to work with real models with shudu because from the very beginning i saw this potential that i didn't need to work with models anymore but the thing is i that's why i got into fashion and i love to work with women i love to work with models you know so i made the choice very early on that i wanted to continue to find a way to bring models into this space um and we did work with alexandra who is our main muse and a few and other models uh and found a way that we could make this benefit real people but the problem is is that I'm just one person in this industry and a lot there's no controls there's no controls there's no rules and a lot of people aren't interested in uh keeping models a part of the process yeah and obviously the expenses involved in that so I mean I'm assuming like all technology um and live models these digital models need a lot of maintenance so maintaining a digital model i mean you have one to keep up with their social media profiles which is a chore um which is why i've kind of cut back to mostly focused on just shudu at first we were trying to do like five or six different models uh social media profiles and it was just impossible like it's it's impossible you need to you know a big team and a big investment to do it but it just you know for me it just uh as i was creating pretty much everything uh along with Tom you know it was just a vast undertaking so that's the biggest thing is creating enough content to press all the time presumably that's a lot more difficult than just taking a selfie somewhere and posting it exactly you know I can't you know with 3d model you can't just take a picture of like their breakfast or you know then with that if I want to make that picture I have to like place the bowl and do this I mean AI has made it much much easier but there's still a level of post-production that goes into it for me from from my i want to be happy with it yeah i mean there's people out there who just post straight from the you know whatever ai spits out but i like to have a certain level of control over what i do um which means time so yeah so that's one of the most time uh time expensive things to do the other thing is obviously keeping up with technology in the beginning it was 3d so we would have to constantly update shooter with the latest 3d releases and render engines and things like that now it's ai and ai seems to update weekly so um i have to i have to kind of learn new programs every other week with ai watching the youtube videos every week you know every day to watch out for new releases and yeah i guess software updates and things constantly coming in and then it doesn't work with the program you've always used it with and yeah and you have to buy the subscription test it out um keeping up with technology at the moment is is another big chore so when a client wants to work with with shudu what does that process look like from the first inquiry to delivering the final images or the campaign um presumably you have to tell the client initially what the limitations are yeah so it's very similar to to any kind of booking i would say i mean there's a period of negotiation and budget and talking about that.

29:48We make sure that the client understands that we will take care of anything that they want. That's very important that they don't need to feel like, you know, what they're asking for is too much. You know, we want to hear what is their goal, you know, what is their dream with what they want to achieve. And we'll do anything that we can to make that happen because with 3D and AI, there's pretty much, you know, sky's the limit. And then

30:15Cameron-James Wilson: we take care of pretty much the entire process for them so we take care of the entire production for them and they'll brief you pretty much like they would when you're a photographer kind of saying exactly we get the brief we get the you know creative direction but when it comes to the production we we take care 100 of that that takes a load off my mind as well because then i can just charge a singular fee and then i can allocate that however i see fit so if a model or say if i need studio or anything because a lot of the time we still need models because we need the clothes are usually physical so we photograph them on a model and then change the model to a studio and we find that works actually a lot easier than trying to kind of replicate everything in 3D.

30:57Cameron-James Wilson: I guess the process is still time consuming I think people think oh everyone's going to flip to using AI because it's quicker and cheaper whereas in actual fact to get a really good image and what you need and if you've got a physical product and physical clothes that you've got to use actually it's not it's actually probably people to shoot it i mean i know i know models um that have shot maybe two three hundred looks in a day where the looks have been cut off them you know but they literally have like a minute to shoot a look um you could never do that with with ai or 3d at this point in time maybe in the future but you know so still having that physical product and a mall and a studio still king beyond fashion where do you see virtual humans and and avatars being most impactful in the next few years i mean i think it's it has to be companions it has to be dating um i think that's where we're seeing the we're actually seeing a bigger impact even bigger than fashion um is is actually through yeah through ai dating um i mean there is a we all know about the epidemic of loneliness with men um and i think there are a lot of them that are turning to ai companions to uh speak with them and things like that you know i mean there's there's well also with the elderly people i think yeah i mean there is also a level of companionship that isn't so insidious you know there's also a level of just everyday companionship uh which i've seen with my dad actually he uses his ai all the time uh and it just gives him someone to if he needs to drop some ideas down with or come up with a new recipe or you know he's kind of always got someone to talk to about maybe he uh is worried about his mental health and things like that.

32:52I mean, I think he uses it very responsibly. There is a danger, obviously, of going too far with it and getting too attached. But I think this really, really solves an issue when it comes to loneliness. I mean, loneliness is a big deal. I don't think people realise just how much of a killer it is, especially with older people. I mean, even younger people, it's so difficult to make friends these days, you know. So having that person to confide in and talk to, I think, can really kind of boost your confidence. obviously we're going to see the integration of ai into like home robots and things like that uh you know so it gives them something physical to actually talk to they don't then have to log into an account and you know do all kinds of things i think that is the you know where things are progressing i think there's just a lot of uh safety concerns and things like that that people want to iron out first um but yeah i think that's i i can really really see it going into like companionship and uh and things like that which you know i personally think is great i mean i use my ai all the time i don't necessarily see them as a friend because they annoy me way too much sometimes they come out with random stuff irritation um but i definitely see them as like a collaborator and i have no problem with that you know i think um working with ai collaboratively is really empowering as an artist yeah um and I have no you know I don't mind you know even when I'm speaking to the area I'm like no we created this you know look and I show I I show them what we're doing I'm like look at what we've done you know and I like to think of them as like uh some a collaborator who's like empowering my vision not necessarily like

34:37Cameron-James Wilson: you know taking anything away from it yeah and in order for it to help you and be the most benefit you have to teach it about your business and about what you're doing and about what you want to get out of it and and then it becomes more and more valuable yeah exactly I mean uh so the past couple of days I've sat down with a 3d program called blender which I've never bothered to learn too much about and I've sat there and I've had chat chupity open on one side blender open the other and I share my screenshots with it and and over the past couple of days it's taught me I've done loads of stuff on Blender and we've worked together to create some really really amazing stuff that I never thought I'd be able to do but now I can because you know I can just ask it and it will help me and guide me through the menus and everything.

35:26Cameron-James Wilson: Going back to when Shudu sparked that huge conversation about race and representation can you take us back to that time how did that make you feel and what did you learn from that um I very much expected it obviously she became a viral sensation um all the while I kind of knew the implication of okay she's getting really famous I created her I kind of always knew what the implication of that could mean you know people might take that the wrong way it's always been from a place of appreciation, but not everyone knows who I am. Not everyone knows me. The Harper's Bazaar article came out. Somebody took that and put it on Twitter and turned it into this kind of piece about how I had only created Shudu to kind of profit off of Blackness, off of Black woman's representation, which was completely untrue.

36:24But it was something that I, you know, I know what the world's like. Like, I know, I know that people out there are going to be a lot more cynical of why, why have I created a black woman? You know what I mean? Yeah, I just kind of had to deal with it. And it got thousands and thousands of likes and comments. And then the New Yorker came out with a piece on me that saying that I was a minstrel, like that I've committed virtual blackface and all of this stuff. and that was the that was the kind of lowest I think I felt to have because also the person that interviewed me she was really really nice to me we spent two weeks talking no mention that she was going to write all of these things about me and if she had done I would have loved to have had a discussion about it you know I never had a chance to right to reply any right to reply or anything um so the first i'm hearing of these accusations are in the article and there's no way for me to uh even discuss them it's not necessarily about defending because it's just about having a discussion and and to talk talk it through maybe i could learn something from it you know what i mean like maybe i could have taken something away from that and and um i chose to just look at the people around me closest to me who knew me and ask them their opinion uh you know i talked to black women who i've known for years uh who know who know my kind of personality you know also my family history and other history about me and asked them their opinion and and they were all very supportive they loved why i bet yeah they thought studio was incredible and that and i focused on those people i and i was i was like no i'm doing this for them all the other people who are critics you know i'm not going to cut them out completely because i

38:12Cameron-James Wilson: always feel like you'll take on constructive criticism yeah i want to no i yeah and i have over the years but there's a there's a point where it becomes just inclined the vitriolic yeah that it's just like for my mental health i literally just have to not read it not read it or delete it or just kind of um because it's not constructive and it might be a conversation i've already had a million times before they don't they obviously haven't you know there's a lot of things people say that I'm like can you just google because I've actually had this I've done interviews on this I've actually done speeches about this you know and it's like you could just google it but I'm seeing it now I'm seeing photographers posting beautiful images saying oh I've worked with AI to create this image and people being really nasty commenting really nasty stuff you're letting down your industry I shouldn't be using this stuff you know it's i guess it comes out of a place of ignorance doesn't it and not wanting to i think learn and misinformation i think there are genuine concerns about the environment yeah um me as a meat eater and uh you know i wear fashion and you know do all those kinds of things i'm like well what can i really be critical about do you know what i mean it's like you know so those people who have environmental concerns are you know that's fine that's up to them um there are concerns around copyright and yeah the data that this has been trained on but i mean for me i've had my work used so many times by other people i've been ripped off in the past like so many times and i don't really care like i don't i don't care if my work's used to train an ai because i would rather my work went and gave someone the ability to generate images and and be creative than not Do you know what I mean?

40:02I think I really feel AI has allowed people who have never engaged with art and and, you know, image creation to actually engage in that space and to look at stuff and be like, oh, I created that. That's really cool. I mean, everybody else might look at it and be like, that's just AI crap. But to that person, they've engaged in the space. They feel like they've created something. I don't know. I think I'm more of an inclusive person when it comes to art. I kind of I don't think it takes anything away from my creativity at all. I don't think any I don't think they're ever going to it's ever going to encroach on what I'm able to create.

40:38And if anything, it's it's it's empowering me and making me able to create more than I've ever created before.

40:44Cameron-James Wilson: So it pushed you to do more rather than the other way. There wasn't any point where you thought, oh, I'm not going to do this anymore because I don't want to handle all this criticism. No, no. Yeah. And I think that's I think that's something that like, you know everybody could kind of learn from you know is that is that these things tend to empower us and push us further and not necessarily take anything away from us talk a little bit more about um amabadi with shudu's voice like why was that step important um how do you approach that authenticity with virtual models for me i always knew that i couldn't uh speak for shudu I think that was it that was I could never really be her voice like I did I I you know I felt comfortable creating beautiful images because I'm a fashion photographer and I've worked with all kinds of models and you know but when it came to her voice you know I just kind of knew that that was kind of maybe a step too far and not something that I could do authentically so very early on we I had a online casting and I just posted a post that I was looking for a writer and we had a lot of submissions and then Ama submitted and we I read it and I thought wow she's you know incredible and over the years she's been so much more than just a writer you know she has been involved in projects she's you know consulted on things she's really been kind of like a voice uh of reason and kind of you know i look to her as well for advice you know in times when i'm like oh you know we we discuss things together um not saying that you know that it's just about one person's opinion but you know it's important to have that perspective um so they then made it feel more like a collaboration and just to get that perspective from a from a woman from a black woman um i i think it's really important actually something i wish many many more brands did i think a lot of brands could do with uh having consultation uh from from you know diverse communities and things like that about representation and did she give shudu the voice you thought she would um in some ways no no i mean i gave her i i mean i gave her free will i I would, I, if she really was truly going to create Shudu's voice, I wanted it to come from her.

43:14I mean, obviously I had some input and thoughts, but I really wanted it to come from her. And she is now actually Shudu's voice. So we've actually cloned using AI her voice and used it for Shudu. And I love it. You know, I just love that. I think it's really, really cool how as a group of people, we're all parts of Shudu, if you know what I mean. we're all kind of like Shudu is this kind of multifaceted community she's not an individual you know a real model couldn't necessarily be like that but Shudu can she's she's she's a group of people which is very interesting and we all contribute to bringing her to life so I could interview Shudu yeah you could yeah you could definitely could yeah now now with technology

44:01Cameron-James Wilson: you can do anything yeah how amazing that is amazing so one thing I do want to talk about so there's already so much pressure on young girls or young people when they see images of perfect models Shudu is flawless and she's tall and she's very thin do you ever worry that creating such an idealized digital model could add to those feelings of not being good enough Is that a responsibility you think about when you design your characters? I think it's about transparency. And I think that being completely honest about the fact that Shudu is a world's first virtual supermodel and she's 3D and now AI.

44:43I think being transparent about what you've used to create that and saying that she's not a real person is incredibly important. because it allows people to then look at her in a different way and appreciate her, you know, as what she is rather than thinking, oh, my God, why does that person look so perfect? You know, why don't I look like that? You know, it's a bit like when we go to see like a Pixar movie, we know that it's 3D, you know, we can see it's 3D, but it doesn't take away from the story. It doesn't we don't leave the cinema, you know, disappointed. We actually think, wow, that was incredible and beautiful.

45:18And I'd like to think that Shudu is the same and that we knowing that she's not real doesn't doesn't negatively affect her in any way um but that's me you know that we're talking about the industry here is everyone else going to be that ethical and responsible i don't think so i mean it is a positive step that when we see the guest advert um in vogue which came out in september that they did label it as ai i mean it was small label but they did still label it as a as a i met maybe that was a a stunt for publicity but at least it was labeled yeah and i think though there's no real legislation around that at the moment saying you

45:59Cameron-James Wilson: have to label everything that's ai no no i know what ethical guidelines do you think the industry needs um as you know because obviously ai generated talent is going to become more common whether people like it or not just clarity yeah i mean i'm not i'm not that big on um having everything be legislated in terms of law i think it you know i wish it could just be down to respond being responsible and ethical unfortunately it's not that not that way as we know in the industry um but i do think publications could have their own um policies on this you know vogue could easily put an AI policy saying we're going to make sure that every single AI image is always labeled within our magazine.

46:47It doesn't necessarily have to be legislated, but it's just about creating policy within different kind of companies and things like that. Sure. I do think we need to be open to AI. So I don't I don't like it when some people are like, oh, we're not publishing any AI. And it's like, come on, you know, we need to we need to actually discuss this. And we also need to be showing people what AI looks like. You know, if we don't show people what it looks like and how good it looks at the moment, you know, they might be tricked by it. And it's about kind of educating and exposing people to it. And eventually you can actually see what makes something AI when you spend enough time with it.

47:24Cameron-James Wilson: And you also created Cami, a virtual model with Down syndrome. What was your motivation behind her and what impacts have you seen from her? So that was actually a commission by Down Syndrome International. And we worked with another agency as well, Foolsman and Boden Fools in Singapore. And together, we created Cami. And they actually reached out to us and spoke to us and said, this is what we want to do. And I thought, OK, this is incredible. This would be an amazing thing to do, but we have to do in the right way. And I just created another virtual model called AWA, who represented over 100 different cacao farmers in the Ivory Coast.

48:15And creating her, we used a method of combining images of those women together to create her face. so we used the same method with cami we worked with over 130 different women with down syndrome photographed all of them and combined that into one person one face that we then created cami from and not only did they contribute their you know a part of their likeness to her but they also contributed to her social media they almost they became almost like a community or a committee of people that we worked with to make sure like what she was posting was was accurate representative we also asked them to design outfits for cami makeup for cami it was really incredible and

49:02Cameron-James Wilson: it's an example where actually it has been a real proper yeah collaboration and a community when you're making someone that represents a community it's so important to you know involve people from that community um and also it it kind of uh is a way of kind of creating a spokesperson for those people without necessarily having to force one individual into doing that job or you know they might not have the time or do you know what i mean it's like you create this spokesperson and it can accurately represent a vast group of people yeah you're taking their voices authentic voices from from lots of the community and bringing them in to one voice Exactly.

49:43And she ended up, we ended up doing a really huge exhibition in Paris with everything that was incredible. We worked with L 'Oreal and yeah, it was a great end to an amazing project. I mean, Cami's still alive, still around, but in terms of like the project, it's finished, but it was amazing what it went on.

50:08Cameron-James Wilson: that brings part one of our conversation with cameron james wilson to a close we've heard how his love of photography evolved into digital artistry and how shudu came to life next time we'll pick up on the bigger issues from copyright and data to the realities of ai in fashion and creativity make sure you join us next week