A lot of the chatter about AI right now is because of how much we all communicate on social media. We were all talking about the metaverse and NFTs a year or two ago, and now we aren’t. It will settle down and we will all discover how we want to use it — filmmaker Ruth Hogben says Matthew Fraher of the London-based agency Linden Staub. “A model is no longer required on set, essentially enabling them to be in two places at one time, maximising earnings on other potential jobs,” he explains. “However, AI reproduction of their image will inevitably warrant a lower day rate and devalue their human contribution exponentially. The main consideration needs to be around the protection of use of the original image and the transparency of the image licensing in future.” And what of art directors and photographers? Maison Meta worked with another creative agency, WeSayHi, to develop an entirely AI-generated campaign for Moncler this past February. The result is purposely hyperreal. It’s no surprise to discover the models don’t, in reality, exist – but AI designers in other industries are similarly expert at making things look completely natural rather than fantastical. (Pornography, perhaps more than fashion, utilises the medium to great effect.) The key creative on the Moncler campaign, and others like it, was the person responsible for the prompts: the string of commands used to generate each image. If you can write an amazing set of prompts, you’re as valuable to a client today as Grace Coddington or Steven Meisel were in their heyday. The pen, in this case, is mightier than the lens. But there are photographers who have long been aligned with the cutting edge of digital manipulation who don’t think their jobs are in peril. “When I started out as an assistant to Nick Knight, I remember everything was shifting from film to digital,” says filmmaker Ruth Hogben, who has shot for Fendi, Dior, Rick Owens and Louis Vuitton. “I recently experimented on a shoot with AI, but I also had art director Simon Costin build a set. I wanted to see what it could do as a tool. It will never stop me physically shooting original images because that’s where the human connection is,” she maintains. “A lot of the chatter about AI right now is because of how much we all communicate on social media. We didn’t have that with the shift from film to digital; it didn’t exist. But it’s so constant now. We were all talking about the metaverse and NFTs a year or two ago, and now we aren’t. It will settle down and we will all discover how we want to use it.” AI is also changing what a lot of people who trained in fashion are going to do going forward. Daniel Felstead is the course leader of the MA Fashion Media and Communication degree at the London College of Fashion. He recently tutored a student who has found a role post-graduation as a user interface designer at an aerospace company in China. “But in terms of those traditional jobs in fashion, AI is still offering a lot of opportunities,” says Felstead. “If you’re a stylist, instead of relying on Pinterest – which is all existing material – you can generate your own mood board of wholly original imagery. You aren’t referencing the same images as anyone else.” 71
