Meet the fashion faces of the future. They’re beautiful, fake, and almost completely free to use. “It’s about faster content creation,” Mango’s CEO says.
Mango is going bananas for AI
Mango is a Spanish fashion brand, the kind of company that competes with the likes of H&M and Zara for fast fashion but pretends it’s not fast fashion. Mango first trialed an AI-generated campaign in July, aimed at teenage girls. Now, the company is proudly flaunting its new AI models for a major collection that is also focused on teens.
“This initiative reflects our continued commitment to innovation and being on the cutting edge in the fashion world,” says Jordi Alex, Chief Information Technology Officer at Mango.
The company says they are a “pioneer in the fashion industry” and “one of the first to develop the graphic image of a collection using this technology.” Yet, the new glossy ads are just another field in which AI is displacing the human workforce. A real-life human model could charge around $40 per hour, whereas an AI-generated one costs a fraction of the cost to rent from a company, or is virtually free if developed in-house.
There are already AI-focused modeling agencies that make good money on attractive, mostly female AI models. As the technology becomes even more easily available, more and more companies will undoubtedly embrace AI models. After all, you can create virtually any type of model you want for almost no money, so what’s not to like?
AI makes fast fashion even faster
According to Glossy Magazine, Mango is one of the fashion companies using AI the most. Among other tools, the company uses different AI algorithms to strategically price products, recommend products, and even as a design tool.
For this new AI campaign, the company started by taking photos of each garment and then training its AI model to generate images by positioning the real clothes on the fake model.
“In this phase, the biggest challenge was achieving images with editorial quality similar to a fashion campaign, while maintaining the characteristics of the garment and the model. Finally, once the images were generated with AI, the art team selected, retouched, edited and mastered the images in the photography studio.”
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“It’s about faster content creation,” chief executive officer Toni Ruiz said in an interview.
So fast fashion companies are aiming to become even faster. They can now create new content and new models at lightning speed at virtually no cost. But while this approach might boost efficiency and profits, it also concerns about authenticity in the fashion world.
As AI continues to permeate the industry, one can’t help but wonder: In the relentless pursuit of speed and cost-effectiveness, are we sacrificing the very human touch that makes things like fashion so compelling?