AI: Before You Think It Can't Happen To You, Listen To This Battle Cry From A Supermodel

One of my two clickbait headline moves.*

From Vogue, July 21, 2020:

I Am a Model and I Know That Artificial Intelligence Will Eventually Take My Job 

Shudu Gram is a striking South African model. She’s what fashion likes to call “one to watch,” with a Balmain campaign in 2018, a feature in Vogue Australia on changing the face of fashion, and a red carpet appearance at the 2019 BAFTAs in a custom Swarovski gown.

I’m also a model. I’m from Canada, although I live in New York City now. Unlike Shudu, who’s considered a “new face,” I’ve been in the business for almost five years. I am also a futurist; I spend a lot of time researching emerging technologies and educating young people about the future of work through my startup WAYE. Also unlike Shudu, I’m a real model, and by that I mean I’m a real person. Shudu’s not. She’s a 3D digital construction.

Digital models and influencers are successfully breaking into the fashion industry from every angle. Some have even been signed to traditional modeling agencies. Take Miquela Sousa, a 19-year-old Brazilian American model, influencer, and now musician, who has amassed a loyal following of more than 2 million people on Instagram. She’s collaborated with Prada and Givenchy, has been featured in a Calvin Klein video with Bella Hadid, and she just released a song with singer-songwriter Teyana Taylor this past spring.

Impressive stuff, but there’s one thing that’s keeping real-life me at ease: Miquela, like Shudu, is a computer-generated image (CGI), not artificial intelligence (A.I.). That means that Miquela and Shudu can’t actually do anything on their own. They can’t think or learn or offer posing variations independently. But that won’t be the case for much longer.

DataGrid is a Japanese tech outfit whose A.I. algorithms directly threaten my job. The company uses generative adversarial networks (GANs), which is a type of machine learning, a subset of A.I. I’ll spare you the specifics of the algorithmic details, but in summary, these digital models can offer a vast array of posing options that mimic exactly what we do in e-commerce and commercial modeling. For models like myself, that’s how we make most of our money. The German e-commerce giant, Zalando (for which I have modeled almost a dozen times), has published research papers on this technology. It would seem to be only a matter of time until fashion giants jump on board.

A point of tension that is emerging with CGI models is that their creators aren’t just designing them as avatars, but also giving them entire backstories, personalities, and causes to champion. Take Blawko, a digital male model and self-proclaimed “sex symbol” with tattoos and a sarcastic sense of humor. He referenced being “hungover” in an interview with Dazed Digital. Or consider right-wing, pro-Trump Bermuda, whose bio describes her as “unapologetic” and representing a breakthrough in “modern political thought.” Then there is Shudu Gram, who “hopes to champion diversity in the fashion world, collaborate with creators from emerging economies and under-represented communities, and get together with up-and-coming designers.”

There are major issues of transparency and authenticity here because the beliefs and opinions don’t actually belong to the digital models, they belong to the models’ creators. And if the creators can’t actually identify with the experiences and groups that these models claim to belong to (i.e., person of color, LGBTQ, etc.), then do they have the right to actually speak on those issues? Or is this a new form of robot cultural appropriation, one in which digital creators are dressing up in experiences that aren’t theirs?

I connected with Cameron-James Wilson, the creator behind Shudu Gram, to talk more about this and ask whether he sees the ethical implications of it all. Wilson is white and male. Shudu is Black and identifies as female. “I absolutely do [see the ethical implications], which is why I work alongside writer Ama Badu, who is a woman of color. It’s important to have that voice.” He went on to say that being a former fashion photographer allows him to create beautiful imagery, but when it comes to developing her story and her background, authenticity was needed. “I want Shudu’s story and her background to be just as authentic as the way she looks.”

But we human models have worked really hard to have our stories heard and our authentic experiences considered, and we’ve fought to change the perception that we are just a sample size or a prop for clothes. We’ve mobilized in groups, such as the Model Mafia network that I am a part of, to advocate for social issues and push back on exclusivity in the fashion industry. In some cases our activism has even cost us jobs. But now that we are finally starting to see changes in the industry, digital models can just land the jobs that we took risks for. Or worse, brands can just create CGIs that champion causes instead of actually having to invest in those causes themselves....

....MUCH MORE

*Re clickbait, see for example:
Before Buying into the Idea that Fractional Reserve Banking has Some Sort of Fraudulent Roots, Listen To This Battlecry From A Supermodel

I've mentioned I only have two clickbait moves. There's the "Listen to this battle cry from a supermodel" (and variants) move:
"Before You Say You've Never Discriminated Against Someone, Listen To This Battlecry From A Model" 

And the "one weird trick" move:
Warren Buffet Uses This One Weird Trick to Be Persuasive* 
I maybe should have gone with Buffet for this George Selgin piece at Cato...