• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 8 hours ago

The 1944 song Laura, about an imaginary woman, closes with the line, “but she’s only a dream.” 

The newest issue of Vogue features a Guess ad with a beautiful model. And she, too, is only a dream, a dream generated by artificial intelligence.  

Vogue publisher Condé Nast admitted this in a back-handed way, telling CNN “that an AI model has never appeared editorially in Vogue.”

Actually, Guess is highlighting two AI models. And it has drawn a harsh response from the industry.  

“Modeling as a profession is already challenging enough without having to compete with now new digital standards of perfection that can be achieved with AI,” model Sarah Murray complained to TechCrunch. 

However, the ad’s creator, the Seraphinne Vallora agency, denies that it is trying to replace live models. 

"We are here to co-exist together, and we will always see photography, stylists and everyone involved in a photo shoot as incredibly important," says Valentina Gonzalez, co-founder of Seraphinne Vallora, ABC News reports. "The heart of fashion is photography. We will never challenge that."

Co-founder Andreea Petrescu adds that this is “a new avenue of marketing.”

The reaction on Tik Tok was swift. One creator said he was “speechless.”

However, nobody should be shocked by this episode. 

Fashion advertising has never been what you’d call realistic. Models are airbrushed and photoshopped until they are flawless. “We haven’t seen a real model in decades,” one Tik Tok viewer observes. 

It would be a bigger problem if Vogue did an editorial fashion spread.

I’ve long had a theory that some poor souls might look at grainy old films and think that the people in them really are Napoleon, Abraham Lincoln or various Biblical figures. 

This kind of credulity is even more likely in the AI age.

Here’s the best practice: ads with AI models should always be labeled as such.