Like how those pants look on that model? In the future, that model might be as real as Barbie.
In a press release, Levi Strauss & Co. announced a new partnership with Lalaland.ai, a “digital fashion studio that builds customized AI-generated models.” The company says that later this year, it plans to start testing using these AI-generated models to showcase its clothing instead of having to pay a human model to do so.
The company says that the AI-generated models will be used to “supplement” human models and that the technology will increase the “number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.”
Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles, global head of digital and emerging technology strategy at Levi Strauss & Co., tried in a statement to reassure human models (what a sentence to write). Bolles says that while the technology will help the company increase the diversity of models showcasing its clothing, it will “likely never fully replace human models for us.”
“While AI will likely never fully replace human models for us, we are excited for the potential capabilities this may afford us for the consumer experience. We see fashion and technology as both an art and a science, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Lalaland.ai, a company with such high-quality technology that can help us continue on our journey for a more diverse and inclusive customer experience.”
The company says that it currently is common to only see one model showcasing each of its products. With AI-generated images, Levi Strauss & Co. says it can “enable customers to see our products on more models that look like themselves, creating a more personal and inclusive shopping experience.”
While all of that sounds great, it’s not hard to see a future where the company uses AI-generated models for most of its digital images, especially as the technology continues to get hyperrealistic. We could end up in a future where human models are only needed for in-person events unless hologram technology makes a huge leap or everyone just throws on a Meta Quest headset at runway events.
The advancement and adoption of AI continue to accelerate. Speaking of the runway, Runway recently announced its next-generation text-to-video technology. Microsoft also recently brought text-to-image generation to Bing.
