Comment on H&M to use digital clones of models in ads and social media
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 5 days ago
This strikes a blow to the entire ecosystem. Now, while I’ve been behind the camera for things I’ll not mention, what strikes me more is how much happens behind the scenes in any given industry.
You know how news has largely gone to shit? Well, part of that – corporate consolidation aside – is that everyone who was supposed to be the last line of defense was either laid off or shunted to a hub while reporters fresh out of college are expected to suddenly be photogs, videographers and social-media experts.
It has backfired spectacularly (the only reason we didn’t run an A1 hed with the wrong name of a gallery in Ashland, Ore., is that I was laying out the page in Texas but had already been the news ed there a lifetime ago and knew damn well what it was named and physically where it was [see also: getting street names wrong because you’ve never lived there]). That’s not at all generative “AI” but indicative of how these things go.
Quality goes down, and in this case there might be a few extra fingers, but more to the point, what are they doing? You’re a fashion retailer, and you’re going to graft the product you’re selling onto a body? And “AI” is going to make this look realistic?
That’s not how this works. Wow, are companies going to be surprised to discover that marketing via generative models raises more problems than it solves. The tech isn’t there yet to make your shirt look form-fitting on a digital twin. I mean, run it enough times, and you’ll get close (monkeys, typewriters, Shakespeare), but at that point, what are you really saving in terms of outlay? You’re paying an “AI” firm for GPU cycles sted professionals who know what the fuck they’re doing.
Not to mention the poor timing on this. Generative models have valid applications, but the current landscape is one where more and more people are coming to understand the limits of what it can do. There’s a needle very close to the bubble at this point, so this is not when you want to lean into tech that is proving itself not up to the task just in text and even worse in other spheres.
Simply put, humans are still better at everything in the arts (I’ll grant the utility in the sciences of being able to perform analysis in orders of magnitude less time in certain cases) than any of these models. And photoshoots are an art, not a science.
They’ll no doubt push ahead anyway. But the ROI isn’t what they think it’s going to be.
I’m just waiting for OpenAI or someone else to jack up prices in the name of profits so high that they will be the equivalent of Nvidia for business AI.
Suddenly hiring for creative roles will be back in full swing because companies won’t be able to afford it. Unfortunately, in the end, the shareholder always wins
Profits? What are these profits of which you speak? These firms are losing money hand over fist over other fist and promising investors they’ll make money Soon™.
I was working in tech ahead of the dot-com crash in 2000, and this is exactly what we were seeing. The tech wasn’t ready for what a number of companies were claiming. As my NDA with a defunct startup holds no water 25 years later, I’ll point out our business model was tablet development on the hardware side and roughly where search got to around 2015 on the software side.
The all-hands meeting where it was announced we were pivoting to just being a search engine (given established players were plentiful at the time; this is before the rise of Google) led me to quit. It was very clear to me – at 20 – that this was a road to nowhere.
I’ve seen this movie before. MBAs are fucking idiots.
I’ve seen this movie before. MBAs are fucking idiots.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Moreover, the company name made no sense once the hardware portion was removed from the equation. They shut down six weeks after I left when the VC funding ran out and they couldn’t raise another round.
Mothra@mander.xyz 4 days ago
I agree with you in sentiment, but unlike you, I DO believe AI can easily get your child slave work shirt to fit better on the non existent model made out of an amalgamation of all your previous photoshoots plus stolen data.
It keeps getting more and more accurate every day.
Even if it doesn’t fit great straight out of the generator, you already have a Photoshop touch up artist who will fix that and any extra fingers. It works out. H&M may have to pay some extra 20% to the Photoshop designer in India, but will spare themselves paying a photographer and a model by 100%. Plus any other people in charge of recruiting models and organizing shoots now can get their hours reduced too.
I really really hope things end up like you say they will. Nothing would make me happier than seeing these idiots hitting a wall.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 4 days ago
H&M claims in the article that they’d still pay the models prevailing wages to use their likenesses without them having to do anything, which on the surface sounds like a good deal. Further recruitment seems unnecessary when you have a stable of 30 digital twins who will never age.
And sure, a Photoshop user making slave wages can fix whatever issues the “AI” spits out up to a certain point. That’s not to say it will look as … uh … natural as airbrushed, toned pics.
Mothra@mander.xyz 4 days ago
That’s just the model getting paid- which is good - but the pay rate isn’t the same as the one for the shoot. It’s the rate they get paid for the images to be used, something similar to royalties so to speak. It will greatly benefit a minority of popular models, and drastically reduce the job pool for new models.
The photographers are getting totally screwed though, as well as the make up artist and anyone else involved in a shoot.
Powderhorn@beehaw.org 4 days ago
I mean, that was the central thesis of my original response.