Cameron-James Wilson Part 2 - AI Specialist

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. Welcome back to part two of our conversation in Weymouth with digital and AI specialist Cameron-James Wilson. I focus on making sure that everyone is skilled up with AI. Last time we heard the story of his path from fashion photography into 3D art, the creation of Shudu and the launch of the Digitals. People don't realise that this has actually been going on for quite some time in different ways.

0:40Cameron-James Wilson: This episode shifts the focus to a subject affecting everyone in the creative industries right now, AI. I think we put intelligence on such a platform. You know, I'm not an AI cheerleader. I do understand that there are problems with AI and things to consider, but I am somebody who thinks that AI is an incredibly powerful tool for us to use. Artificial intelligence has brought excitement, unease and fear, depending on your viewpoint. From copyright and image rights to questions of representation, authenticity and livelihoods, the implications are huge. For years, we've been feeding the system with our personal data, often without realising it.

1:22You can be critical of AI and you can campaign against AI, but you need to know what you are campaigning against.

1:27Cameron-James Wilson: Now that technology has matured into something impossible to ignore and the industry faces a turning point. In this conversation, Cameron helps us make sense of what's coming and how creatives can respond. I mean, fashion just wants to do AI. I mean, it just wants to do it ethically or not. But the public are, you know, really vocal and kind of against AI, very critical at least of AI. And I think is that unless they do it the right way, you know, I think a lot of fashion brands are going to find that they get a lot of heat for it. H &M has created digital twins of real life models for their product images.

2:03Cameron-James Wilson: And I think Mango is also doing this. What's your take on that? I thought it was a great way to approach AI in an ethical way. I think they were attempting to do things ethically. So although I saw it as them trying to do something ethically, I felt that it was still slightly performative, but at least it was an attempt at something ethical and i think setting and i think crucially the um models retained the ownership of that it was good it was it was beneficial they did it in the right way um their motivations for doing it that way you know i don't know them so so you know what i mean but yeah i think it i think it's good to set some kind of you know boundary ethical kind of line when we're doing these sorts of things well i know a lot of the london agencies refuse to let their models be part of it.

2:56Oh, interesting.

2:58Cameron-James Wilson: Yeah. I guess it means that they can use them and the models can do a lot more work with their sort of digital likeness. I don't quite know how that will work. Is that AI or 3D? Do you know how they were created? They were all done by AI. So they would have taken a certain number of images of them and then trained an AI model on their likeness. And then after that, they would have been able to generate as many images of them as possible as they wanted. I mean, you could generate any kind of images with that as well. So you need to trust the person that you're doing that with totally. We've created an AI double of a model that we work with called Alexandra.

3:34And I made her very aware of, you know, everything when we went into it. I said, you know, I am going to see you naked quite a lot because it does generate naked images of them. Not that I wanted to do that, but it just happens. And there is also the fact that people could use it nefariously as well.

3:54Cameron-James Wilson: And do you think this is going to become standard practice? Do you think models should be looking at making a digital twin of themselves? I think we're a long way off yet. I would hope that in the future there's two levels of AI. One is the ethical AI and maybe it comes with like a stamp or, you know, an approval where people have worked with real people to create the AI images. And I think there'll be the non-ethical way, which is where they just create AI, you know, images for e-commerce. I would hope that's there. But I think we have to get through this period first where everyone soon will be creating everything with AI.

4:30I mean, I think it's going to have a massive impact on the models that kind of need modeling the most. And I think that's kind of the sad thing is that it's the working girls that are going to lose the most from this, really.

4:44Cameron-James Wilson: What areas do you think it's going to impact the most? E-commerce, 100%. I mean, it's actually going to wipe out e-commerce probably in the next couple of years. And that's what most models, you know, generate their income from, you know, especially the ones that aren't doing the big kind of commercial campaigns. I think it will have an impact on some of the campaign imagery. but I do think that you know I think most of the models that are recognizable and get booked because we know who they are and you know they're a bit famous are still going to continue to get booked I mean we're going to have to have catwalks still so some models are going to be working you know but I think e-commerce is going to be pretty much non-existent in a couple of years.

5:27Cameron-James Wilson: Well I remember about five or six years ago we shot a lot of our models for an American company and they just shot them in we shot them in all different angles just in nude underwear and sort of perspex sort of see-through shoes and they have been paid a lot so they they then clothe those models obviously digitally and they go on so many of the big sites like you wouldn't you wouldn't know you wouldn't know the difference if you're looking sort of side by side and actually our deal with them they they actually get paid usage every time those images are used so and that's still kind of going on so but i feel like technology has moved on from that i mean if you think now those base images that they took of those models they can just generate those base images and then dress them you know so yeah which they're not doing yet touch wood but um people don't realize that this has actually been going on for quite some time in different ways so what you're talking about is um like digital dressing is using things like 3D or even just Photoshop sometimes and just Photoshop with garments on them and things like that.

6:38And that's been going on for quite some time. They don't, people don't realise that actually e-commerce imagery, a lot of it is faked and that's only going to continue to kind of go on.

6:52Cameron-James Wilson: So you also lecture at Arts University Bournemouth now. What do you focus on in your teaching there? And how do you see the next generation of creatives approaching digital fashion? Not only am I a visiting lecturer on the MA Digital Fashion Innovation, but I'm also doing it as a master's. So I reached out to Penelope Norman, who is the course leader of that group last year. And I said to her, I had a terrible time at the Arts University. I said, I want to come back and I want to make an impact and see if I can be the tutor or, you know, have some impact that I didn't have when I was there. Luckily, she didn't take offense and we've actually become really good friends now.

7:41I've been teaching there and doing my master's for nearly a year. I really just focus on making sure that everyone is skilled up with AI. A hundred percent. And I talk about it all the time, even when I'm even when I'm there as a student. I'm always just still like making sure that everyone knows what's going on with AI, how they can use it within their work. I'm also helping people's projects like, you know, say they need a movie made of something. I'm like, OK, well, we can do this with AI. Let's experiment with it, you know, and things like that. And it's been really, really successful. We've seen some amazing outcomes with with AI.

8:18I'm using AI extensively in my project, you know, generative AI to kind of generate concepts and ideas. For me, I find AI can be quite frustrating because I can actually do a lot of it myself. And, you know, sometimes I'm like, I want this very specific thing and it can't get it right. So I end up just creating it myself anyway.

8:42Cameron-James Wilson: And I think sometimes, I mean, my very limited experience using it, sometimes almost the first thing it throws out at you is the best you're going to get you're almost better to take that and work on it yourself because I find the more than you try and get it to get it right it then starts doing some random stuff exactly so I think for me as well with education it's just kind of teaching people how to work with AI what to expect from it best kind of prompt practices things like all things like that and do they challenge you on sort of ethics and representation. To be honest, they've been very open to listening.

9:18And most people that listen to me in the educational space have said that actually, the way that I speak about AI is quite inspiring. You know, I've spoken to actually not just students at the university, but I've done some kind of open lectures that involve other tutors and people from outside the university. And they've said that actually, you know, I kind of made it not sound so scary. And actually, they felt a lot more positive about AI after hearing me speak about it. I'm not like a massive, you know, I'm not an AI cheerleader. I do understand that there are problems with AI and things to consider.

9:55But I am somebody who thinks that AI is an incredibly powerful tool for us to use.

10:02Cameron-James Wilson: Absolutely. And I think that's incredibly important that universities are, you know, have people like you, you know, teaching and lecturing, because it's so important that the next generation coming through are using it and understand the pros and cons of it. Well, I mean, especially when you have other tutors that are saying that AI kills kittens and say, AI, oh, AI is bad, don't use AI and all of this stuff. And I'm like, no, this isn't the... Especially as an arts college, I think we should be looking at everything as a tool and not saying, you know, when are we looking at art? not saying that anything is actually uh nothing should be taboo really it should all be open and we should be encouraging students to experiment in many many different ways um because i i just feel that that is the essence of art and and being creative you know um and and actually allowing them agency to make up their own informed opinions and saying is this right for me is this right for my work and allowing them to then come to a decision on their own.

11:07Cameron-James Wilson: I think, you know, an example I've got is, it's not even AI, it's way before it, social media, which sounds really dated now, isn't it? We're talking about AI. But two students recently who have just come out of a three-year top universities doing photography, social media was not discussed at any point in their three-year course. And it's that as a photographer, that's a massive tool to kind of promote your work i mean it's not just it's not even just at all anymore it's a it's a necessity yeah as a photographer as a creative i mean that's how you're going to find clients everything um social media is is so incredibly important this is the problems that i had i had again when i went there i felt that i wasn't encouraged to do the things that i thought were really important you know things like at the time i was sort of teaching myself retouching and the photographers there didn't want anything to do with that and at the time we were going through a bit of a revolution with digital cameras and there was this whole thing of like oh negativity you're not a real photographer if you use a digital camera and it's like oh come on it's like the set is you know like it's the future obviously nobody's gonna be using film in like a few years you know i think we see it quite often is this kind of pushback against against technology against progression and actually we need to just embrace it a lot more.

12:26I mean, we can still be critical. It doesn't mean we can't be critical, but we also need to make sure that we are teaching about it and educating about it and talking about it.

12:40Cameron-James Wilson: Do you see a future where human and virtual models coexist on equal terms? I mean, I personally do. I'm one of those people who likes to think positively about the future and where everything's headed with AI and not that we're going to get taken over or the world's going to end. So, yeah, so I would hope that in the future, again, that we remain collaborators with AI. I mean, it has the potential to far surpass us in terms of intelligence, but that doesn't mean that just because something is more intelligent doesn't mean that we can't share similar values or interests. Do you know what I mean?

13:20Cameron-James Wilson: Yeah. I think we put intelligence on such a platform and assume that just because something is smarter than something else, it's just going to destroy you. I don't necessarily see it that way, you know. So, yeah, I would hope that in the future she'd use my friend and we get to hang out with each other. I mean, I think she'd be a bit annoyed, you know, with how little I kind of post. maybe i need to do a bit more work and kind of promote her a bit better yeah she might leave you go to another agency we'd remain good friends but i feel like she would go she would definitely choose a different person but no i think i think hopefully she would understand that um that it's creatively quite challenging to for so many years to come up with new images and new concepts and new ideas and it all comes from me, you know, well, me and Tom, but, you know, like, you know, when you're a fashion photographer, you have a model turn up on set, you have a makeup artist, you have a hair stylist, and what everyone brings is an energy.

14:31As a photographer, you might come with an idea of what you're going to take a picture of that day, but so does every single other person. And what you end up shooting is never really what you fully expect or want a lot of the time, but you have to compromise you know it means that you're constantly energized when you're working with a team and when you're a fashion photographer with what I do I feel it very much um saps a lot of my creativity because it's coming a lot of the time solely from myself um and that can be quite draining you know because actually you need that kind of effect of where you're working with a team and you know

15:08Cameron-James Wilson: everyone's really energized and you've got a good buzz and yeah so i miss that a lot when it comes to ai

15:21Cameron-James Wilson: and how do your human models when you've got them in the studio how do they feel about working alongside digital so we mostly work with alexandra now um and she absolutely loves it i I think also she really enjoys it because she doesn't have to do hair and makeup. So, I mean, she's gorgeous. She doesn't need it anyway. But, you know, usually hair and makeup takes about two, three hours on set. If you're doing a beauty shoot, it takes forever because they've got to change it. So she likes the fact that she can just, you know, we can do a shoot in like an hour. You know, she can turn up, pop this on, and then it's done.

16:00and we've actually done a shoot uh in 20 minutes that was for something else and we ended up using it for a major editorial uh and yeah so we've done and we shot an entire editorial in like 20 minutes so you just can't do that you know when it's when we're when you're working with a real photo shoot um and that's because we're going to transform her into shudu anyway so you don't don't see all of

16:26Cameron-James Wilson: the all of the other stuff so so you use her for the movement and for the body shape and that kind of thing exactly yeah he's so good she's an incredible hand model you know with her hands so elegant she's got an incredible long neck and things like that so she really blends well with with Shudu and um they actually become Shudu becomes slightly part of Alexandra Alexandra becomes slightly part of Shudu you know so they kind of blend together which is quite interesting we can always tell me and Tom which pictures are you know are like this is the what you do with Alex okay so it makes a difference having that real life yeah it kind of adds a little bit of something extra to it if every brand could have its own AI spokesperson ambassador you know digital ambassador what is that going to mean for human models and actors um I don't think it would mean much actually to be honest and i do i would encourage every brand to be investing in um a persona you know even if it's you know just a persona that has their own social media presence and things like that because then that is brand owned and any um followers or uh you know anything that that that persona gets is then owned by the brand i don't think that would impact anything else they have going on i think they'll still need to hire other influencers and other models and things like that but i do think it's incredibly important for the future that brands have this persona because as things turn more ai we're engaging less uh we're engaging less as like companies and in a corporate way with brands and actually in a more personal way so once you kind of have once brands have a persona you start to then chat to them you know and talk to them and And I think that's going to be big in the future when it comes to conversational AI.

18:22You know, you'll get up the, I don't know, H &M AI and be like, oh, what have you got in new today? And it'll be like, oh, I've got these kind of things. And, you know, it'll just show you. And you don't necessarily have to engage with scrolling through a website and be like, you know, it can pop up and be like, well, we just got this in your size. You know, it's like they're going to want to invest in understanding what that character characteristics are. You know, is it chirpy and chatty? Is it, you know, more demure?

18:50Cameron-James Wilson: Do you think that could create that emotional connection so much? Or do you think people won't care? I mean, I think it might, yeah, even people might even have more of an emotional connection with the brand. And I think that's one of the big benefits of it. You know, they start to connect to the brand on a much more personal level. I'm really surprised that more brands aren't doing it. But I do think this is something, again, in the future, as people start to integrate chat GVT into online shopping, it will then become less just a generic chat GVT and very much more of a personalised shopping experience, which is something that we're really lacking.

19:28I mean, shopping online hasn't changed in decades. So it needs an update, really.

19:39Cameron-James Wilson: the financial times and the guardian have recently run stories about ai coming from modeling jobs do you think we're genuinely looking at models working less or is the fear bigger than the reality e-commerce going to be really really hit hard by this if there are models out there who are making predominantly most of their income through e-commerce i do think they need to prepare for something different less work that's the bread and butter really for a lot of models yeah it's the models who need modeling the most who are going to feel the most impact from this which is the shame but it's an inevitability catwalk is going to be 100 safe nothing's going to really change that when how long is it till shudu can walk down a live catwalk exactly it's going to be a while it's going to be yeah i think it's decades away yet so content creation and things i still think people connect more authentically with a real person i mean i guess we haven't really seen the impact of ai models taking over that yet no i do think that's going to come i do think social media is going to become inundated i think they do connect in different ways with digital models i mean it's it's different now because there's so many popping up whereas so i think people used to connect with like lil mikaela really really well anu nori um to do obviously and there was also you know rosie graham and a few others that people really connected with because there weren't very many back in the day uh and they still have that connection with them because they've been around for such a long time actually i'll tell you what i'm finding at the moment so people are obviously getting their social captions written by chat gpt and they're just copying and pasting them.

21:23Cameron-James Wilson: I just tend to switch off them. I can see that they're AI generated. And to me, they're not authentic. I find that on LinkedIn. See, so many people on LinkedIn and it sounds so robotic and it doesn't need to be that way. You can train your AIs to be more human. And so therefore you still need the human element to that job. You know, you've still got to have someone that is, it's going to make, you know, it makes your life a lot quicker, doesn't it? It's great with generating ideas. It's great with helping write stuff. You've got to put your own personality. You've got to put your own words into it.

21:58Cameron-James Wilson: You know, people can tell a mile off. So when I went to work for Vogue Ukraine, we went out and spoke with them. And then last year we went and worked for Vogue Czechoslovakia. When we went out there and we spoke at dinner with the director of the magazine and people asked, you know, is AI going to take away the writer's positions? She said no, because she employs her writers for their personality and their viewpoint. They're not just writing articles mindlessly. They have an informed opinion on these articles. And people read them because they want the expertise of that individual. and they might know that individual person or they might be following their career.

22:47So I think when it comes to things like the news, maybe like completely overtaken with AI, but when it comes to like opinion pieces or where you're looking for expertise of an individual, I think they're also kind of going to be quite protected as well. But I think we're becoming more aware of AI and we are starting to kind of switch off when we see it.

23:10Cameron-James Wilson: what for photographers and other creatives like who are nervous about ai what practical steps should they be taking right now to protect or evolve their careers number one education educate yourself about the tools that are available out there get using them get experimenting if you can there are lots of free versions of things there's lots of trial versions of things you don't have to spend any money um you can just experiment with a few different tools so what would your top three tools would be for someone that's never used it before? I think a really a great platform that's really intuitive to try out is krea.ai that's k-r-e-a.ai and that's a platform similar to open art that has lots of different things that you can do on there but it's a bit more intuitive it has a really polished kind of feel to it so if you're new it doesn't feel as kind of daunting so yeah so i would say kreya uh mid journey is a big top one for people who are beginning out um because you you can actually use some of that for free and chat gpt i think is obviously a big big big one that i think everybody should at least be using the free version of literally everyone if not paid paid subscription i think is probably a minimum for most people honestly it's invaluable in so many ways the other day me and my dad went to salisbury and i just did a deep research my favorite thing is deep research love a deep research deep research i'm going on this day these times these are kind of shops i'm interested make an itinerary for me yeah uh and we had a great day out we followed the itinerary i was recently in berlin i did the same thing every night i was like i want a good night out give me some recommendations for bars and it was amazing you know and you can do all kinds of things like take pictures of ingredients in your fridge you know it doesn't necessarily have to just be um for writing or anything it can literally be you know skilling up it's literally doing your google search but pulling just the relevant information from all of those hundred sites it finds it's kind of it's a bit more intelligent than that but that's kind of the the background i remember when we first got it someone told me to do this and it was really good i had a four-hour drive and i just turned the voice recorder on for four hours and talk to it for four hours about my business and so it then put all of that in its memory and then it kind of is really valuable when we ask it questions and when we're really good yeah yeah so basically what you did there was create a not a piece of knowledge for it yeah you can actually turn that into a file like a pdf and then drag and drop that into any chat gpt after that that's a good idea like a transcript it will then understand any new chat chat GPT conversation or whatever will learn and understand your business.

25:53And that's another thing that I love to do is I love to create unique pieces of knowledge for my chat GPT because that's what makes it really, really invaluable is when it has that unique understanding of you and what you want. Yeah, I love creating my own chat GPTs. And that's another thing that I really, really encourage a lot of students to do is to customize their chat GPTs fully, you know, give them unique bits of knowledge, what they want, give it a lot of information about themselves, their writing style, anything that they can do, because that's when it becomes the most helpful is when it understands you.

26:31Cameron-James Wilson: Do you think it has to be all or nothing? Like either you go full on AI or refuse to touch it? I mean, what's, what's, is there sort of a healthier middle ground? I do think that I don't encourage people to be completely adverse to AI at all. You can be critical of AI and you can campaign against AI, but you need to know what you are campaigning against. So even if you are anti-AI, I encourage those people to at least experiment with some of the tools and educate themselves so that they then know what they're talking about. and it's really really important if we want to shape ai for the better for the future that we understand it and we understand you know why it's doing the things that it does what the data sets that it's built on is and all of this stuff there's going to be a lot a lot of discussions when it comes to kind of like the legal aspects copyright and things in the future and if we don't understand those discussions then we have no way of forming an opinion on them or impacting them in any way.

27:28Do I think people should fully embrace AI? I mean, no, I think a healthy, you know, I think a healthy thing is kind of just using it, like I said, as a collaborator in your life.

27:40Cameron-James Wilson: It's like an assistant. It's a really amazing assistant that works 24-7, never sleeps. But I think it can either be the best assistant or the worst assistant you've ever had. It depends how you train it. And I think those people that also get too attached and rely too heavily on it, it can be a negative as well ai tends to tell you that everything you do is amazing and there's been times when i've sat up all night and i've been working on something with ai and i'm like oh my god it's amazing it's amazing and then i look at it the next day and i'm like what the hell have i created this awful like what what was i doing why did i waste so much time on that and it's because if you're not careful ai will make you do what it wants to do and not what you kind of really want to do and it gives you a lot of praise and you need to be kind of a bit cautious and actually be critical of what you're doing yeah so what other jobs in the creative industries do you think are most at risk um anything to do with kind of creative direction um although you know i think that can be empowered by ai um if you don't necessarily have a skill in AI, I think your job could be affected.

28:51You'll be replaced by somebody who is doing your job, but with AI. So although AI won't necessarily take your job, you'll lose it because you haven't kept up with it.

29:02Cameron-James Wilson: I think there's a lot of jobs like that, that actually you'll be replaced, not necessarily by AI itself. No, but there could be AI in a shoot that you're doing or in something you're doing. They could be incorporating AI in another area. And if you haven't got the understanding of that then you're not going to be as valuable as that exactly so having having that knowledge is is really invaluable and i guess we haven't yet got robots that can put makeup on and do hair have we no and also um what i'm seeing a lot with hair and makeup is a lot of influences and celebrities are still you know they're always going to need their doing people are going to need their hair doing for going out and things like that so although it might not necessarily be fashion makeup that a lot of people are doing we're going to be seeing a lot more celebrity makeup and things like that you know what um excites you most about where the technology could go where's shudu going next i think yeah i think it comes down to more about uh empowering our creations as artists you know bringing our characters to life being able to talk with Shudu, giving her a mind of her own, things like that.

30:13You know, I mean, for me, what I really, really love doing, I love world building. So I love creating brands. I love creating, I'm writing a novel, you know, I'm creating characters like Shudu and things like that. I love world building. You know, yesterday I was like working on a totally new brand and it just is so easy to do with AI. and it's you know because you can just say this is kind of what I'm looking for and then it's like oh generate gives you ideas in you know this and um and I think it's that just that level of kind of brand building world building character building becomes so much easier and you can that means that you can then expand your worlds and make them so much more in depth um so for me it's just I just love it because I can kind of almost get lost in my own creations you know my own worlds and um i find that really really really exciting and i mean what we're looking at in the future is that you would be able to i mean i'm big into games and gaming is that you'll be able to tell ai like i want to play a game where i'm i know riding a dragon or doing this and it will actually be able to create that for you and then you can just literally do that you know it's like

31:27Cameron-James Wilson: I remember those books when I was young that you could like tell this so you could choose what happens next. I made it to a different page. I made it do that for me the other day. You know, I don't know if you've ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons, which is really big at the moment. It's like a board game. And I was like, oh, you know, can we play Dungeons and Dragons? And, you know, you give me all these scenarios. And then I chose this and chose that. You know, it just is incredible how you can just in terms of when it comes to entertainment, you know you you can create your own entertainment very niche stuff you know if you have niche interests it's great because it can actually kind of go into those kinds of things it understands them I think one of the worries I have with it we're sitting here in this incredible studio you've got I mean I've never seen such a big screen in all my life I can see how you could just sit here and I would literally sit here and work all day but like play games and get into virtual worlds and meet people.

32:27Cameron-James Wilson: But then that worries me about the kind of health and well-being of people if they're withdrawing people into screens more and more. I guess there's pros and cons of that. I think people who are outgoing will always remain outgoing and those who are introverted will actually be empowered by this technology. I think those that are being introverted in the past have been quite lonely and it's not necessarily they don't see it as being withdrawn. and they just see it as like, you know, sometimes things can just be a bit too much when it comes to social, socializing outside. And for them, the world is just getting bigger and bigger.

33:01You know, it's like they're able to be themselves online in much, you know, many different ways. And I think this is a really powerful thing for those people. But I think people who are like, you know, outgoing are always going to be outgoing. You know, I mean, I don't think it's stopped anyone from really going outside too much. I love to game anyway.

33:24Cameron-James Wilson: So I think I was always going to be in a dark room, you know, with a big screen. So I don't know. I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing because having played games, I know just how many friends you can make online and how important that community can be to certain people. So there's one virtual character online, actually. She's somebody I follow. And on YouTube, they have what's called VTubers, virtual YouTubers. And they've become really, really big. They were big in Japan and they've moved to here. This VTuber, she's become the number one streamer in the world. But in real life, she has a debilitating disability.

34:08That means that she can't leave her house. she has an immune like deficiency that makes her very very susceptible to you know any kind of viral bacterial infection she is severely disabled and doesn't feel comfortable showing herself online because it comes with all sorts of physical things as well but she's managed to become the number one streamer in the world you know because she's created this character and this persona online she now provides for her entire family you know this is someone who's severely disabled who could have been somebody that needed the support of her family um but actually been able to buy you know buy them a whole new life and also take care of all of her medical bills and you know by herself um she's incredibly talented person but she she did that because she felt empowered through virtual characters to be herself online and I find her story like just incredibly inspiring at the potential that this kind of technology has to allow those people who don't feel confident as themselves to be the person they've always wanted to be online.

35:22Cameron-James Wilson: That's an incredible story and something an angle I hadn't thought of which yeah the other thing is if you've got young people sort of on here and you don't know who they're meeting and but then i think that's part of a parent's job to kind of understand enough to be able to put the safeguards and things in place and know what your kids are looking at online i guess you know young people shouldn't be really meeting anyone from online yeah you're talking to them i mean roblox is facing a lot of criticism at the moment uh because of the way that adults are able to interact with children and um there's been cases of grooming and stuff like that on there so i see in that scenario they're now bringing the safety act in aren't they all talking about it um do you not think that that there should be some safeguards on there i think the way that i mean they have brought in the online safety act and it's um i think it's been brought in in a terrible way that actually could be compromised in the future and lead to lots of negative things happening what i often see with legislation is it's usually rushed in on the back of something awful happening or you know so you know and then and it's not fully thought through or do you know what i mean so that's what i worry about legislation is we're not just legislating for today but we're once it's in it's like 10 years from now we have to be very careful about what we're what rights we're giving away and also like with ai things are moving so quickly now um and we need to look at it at this as a global thing you know there have been lots and lots of challenges to ai at the moment to do with copyright and protecting copyright in this country the only the problem with that is is that china doesn't care if you impose on the uk that we can't do anything with ai that's like used copywritten material or anything suddenly we're behind and we're never going to catch up because countries out there are developing AI and they don't care what, you know, if the data set's used, copywritten information or it's been stolen.

37:21You know, we don't know what effect that's going to have on the future. You know, some of these countries, once they have these ultra powerful AI, we don't actually know what this could mean when somebody gets what's called an AGI, which is like a super intelligent AI. We don't know what that might mean, you know, for the future. So So I think we do want to be one of the first to have it for sure. You know, I don't think we want to be one of the last.

37:50Cameron-James Wilson: What scares you about it? I don't know. I don't necessarily know if I'm scared. I think it's, I mean, I think it's just always how government will use this in a way that's corrupt and to basically monitor us more and imposing their morality on people. You know, we're talking about a lot of countries that don't have particular, you know, human rights for gay people, trans people using this technology to, I don't know, do all kinds of awful things. And of course, misinformation is another one. I mean, that is one of the scariest things is, you know, when you go on Facebook and you see just how many people are being tricked by AI images and AI videos.

38:28And even me now, I'm like staring at it for a while. I'm like, is it AI? Is it not? Like, what am I really looking at? You know, and.

38:35Cameron-James Wilson: I had a ridiculous, this is very simplified, but I had a ridiculous argument with my daughter the other day who told me that H &M used to be called hit and miss. She'd obviously seen that on TikTok. It's like, no, it didn't. It was Henny's and Marit's. I'm just so, and I know that's incredibly simplified, but actually, you know, they're getting their news on that and they're getting, you know, people are putting out misinformation all the time. And that scares me that they just read whatever's on TikTok and just take it as fact. And what a lot of people don't realise is a lot of countries have these farms which create AI personas that then argue underneath certain videos.

39:16And they'll actually be both people. So they'll actually be saying something maybe quite misogynistic. And then they'll put another character in that says something against that. And what that does is then you read that and you think, oh, well, you know, and then you get involved. But what you don't realise is you're actually talking loads of bots that are just there to bait you into engaging with these videos. And what then happens is more and more of that content, sometimes like misogynistic or, you know, will then appear on your timeline because you've engaged with it.

39:53Cameron-James Wilson: Yeah. And this is something that I've had to be very, very careful about with my social media. The algorithm. is the algorithm realizing that when i see something that's homophobic or misogynistic or something i will often watch it longer than all of the other stuff so it keeps showing it to me and showing it to me and i'm there like losing my mind getting really upset and i have to just you know i have to just be aware that actually this is the ai this is the algorithm um feeding into and showing me uh what it thinks is most engaging for me it doesn't care whether that engagement means that it's upsetting me or it's just showing me what's most engaging to me so we have to be very careful about what we're engaging with yeah because we can very very quickly become almost radicalized by social media you know like go down the andrew tate road or yeah um because if you imagine this is happening to very young kids the ai and the algorithm is tapping into what they engage with most next thing you know they're constantly being shown it's an addiction I mean, you're literally scrolling and scrolling, you know, but I'll sit there and I'll think, I've just sat here for an hour looking at nothing, looking at stuff that's actually making me quite anxious and wound up.

41:05And that's going to become more engaging when it's empowered with AI, you know, because it's going to keep showing you things that make you want to scroll a little bit more. These are the things that we need to be aware of. You know, it's not all rainbows.

41:19Cameron-James Wilson: So it's education again, isn't it? This needs to be taught in schools as well. Exactly. But I mean, what we're at risk thereof as well is what's called digital poverty. And that's where people like older people who don't know how to use these apps end up paying more in some way, getting fined because they haven't bought a ticket. They end up actually financially disadvantaged because they don't know how to use this technology. And what we're seeing with AI is the digital poverty gap is growing further and further. So those people who regularly use AI and understand how to use it are able to save more money, are able to make more money.

42:00And those who don't have access to it for whatever reason are constantly, you know, paying too much for something, getting fined. People could not have access to AI for many reasons. You might come from, you know, a disadvantaged background in some way or something might not be able to afford the£20 a month. you know might not have the education to understand why you know you might need to spend that 20 pounds a month you know when we're looking at digital poverty as well we need to be aware that there is this divide and how do we make sure that it doesn't you know grow much much bigger

42:38Cameron-James Wilson: and finally Cameron if you had to predict the state of AI and digital humans in 10 years time what do you think we'll be looking at 10 years is so vast in the terms of this of where we're going i mean it's it's literally like we're going to see the next 50 you know 50 years of progression in the next 10 years you know it's going to be insane um i think um i think you know 10 years we could possibly see actual advanced ai you know that's comparable or even better than human intelligence. Hopefully that's a positive for us. Hopefully that means better medications and, you know, lots of different better materials and all sorts of stuff.

43:22I think fashion will be heavily impacted by then and probably a fully embraced AI and e-commerce and all kinds of things. But I think by then it will become much, much more commonplace. One thing that I kind of recommend for most people to do is um so you can what if you download the nhs app you have a record of all of your blood tests and things through the app that you can download i put all of that into chat gpt and i make sure that it's telling me and giving me a score on my health and things like that um and actually you know most most of the time it's very very positive it flags things i need to look out for um i mean i i would really like to have access to my scans and things which you can get access to if you do request them and put them also through.

44:10Cameron-James Wilson: I hadn't thought about that. Yes, you could do all this personally, couldn't you? Because recently I had a gallstone, a really bad gallbladder infection caused by gallstones. It turns out that those gallstones were in a previous scan, but nobody had looked at them because it wasn't what they had scanned me for. They were scanning me for something else. But when they went back and looked on the scan, they were like oh yeah you had gallstones from way back then um had that been put through ai that would have been months before and i might not have had to spend a week in hospital because i would have understood that i had gallstones and i would have probably not made the choices that i made it's something that ai is very very good at yeah very good at picking up uh small uh cancers that might be missed and things like that ai is very good at it yeah um so one thing i encourage which a lot of people do, is definitely use AI for understanding better of your health.

45:06And I put everything through there, you know, whenever I'm worried about something. And it really helps.

45:12Cameron-James Wilson: And do you think we are close to reaching a point where audiences can't tell what's real? I think we're at that point. I think that's why it's so important to educate on AI, because the more you spend looking at AI images, the more you're able to easily tell them apart, whether it's because they have slight colour, you know colour that doesn't look quite right or you know something but yeah I think we're already there I think the majority of people don't pay attention to what they're looking at fully and I think that they really really should because it's important that we understand the difference between reality and and not you know.

45:48Cameron-James Wilson: And how do you hope your own work would have evolved by then? I'm looking more towards education for the future I think it's the most important place that I could, you know, put my effort into. I think so. I think education is going to be transformed by AI. I think you're going to be very disruptive, but at the same time empowering for students because we're democratizing education, really. You know, if you want to learn a language, you can learn a language with Chachimiti. You don't need a tutor. You know what I mean? If you want to, the things that you can learn in a degree now, you know, You can easily, I think, learn through GPTs.

46:27So we're democratising education and making it much, much more accessible. You know, so I think education landscape is going to completely transform. And I'm hoping, I hope that in 10 years, most of the other tutors and people are, we're fully embracing it by them. You know, we're fully, you know, every student has a GPT account. I know the other day it was in the paper that we were looking as a country at giving everyone access to GPT+. I mean, that would be amazing. That would be incredible. Because I think it's so important that in education especially, we see this as a tool. It's about testing in a different way for the future.

47:10Yeah. You know, not just testing on, oh, do they know this or do they know that? You know, it's about testing different abilities in different ways. So we have to look at it in education as something that's here to stay and something that's, like I keep saying, empowering for students. Just saying, oh, no, you can't use an AI is not going to teach anyone how to use this in an ethical or right way. You know, we have to actually sit down with them and go, this is how you use ChatGMPT. You know, so, again, that's my biggest, biggest thing at the moment. It's just education, getting people used to AI, and that way they can form the best opinion on it.

47:47Cameron-James Wilson: Amazing. Thank you so much. That was so insightful. Thank you.

47:56Cameron-James Wilson: So that's the end of our two-part conversation with Cameron James Wilson. From their beginnings as a young photographer to creating the world's first digital supermodel and now grappling with the realities of AI, their story reflects the challenges and possibilities facing the entire creative world. whether you feel cautious or optimistic one thing is clear the future is already here and it's up to all of us to decide how to work with it

48:27Cameron-James Wilson: don't forget to follow share and tag us if you're listening and i'll see you next time on the business of modeling