DFT Perspectives and Culture

Beauty Storytelling and The Shock of The New

The evolution of beauty is in parallel with people's shifting perspectives. How, then, shall we navigate at the crossroads of authenticity and technology?

There’s been a lot of dissenting voices and opinions forming around the controversy of the Guess ad campaign, created by Seraphinne Vallora, which Vogue had published. It’s been observed that the AI-generated model has an extremely close digital likeness to Kate Upton, a very popular model.

Many are in upheaval about the use of AI model images in place of humans. Some raise the issue of beauty perfection, job displacements, and the entire future of the modeling industry. Someone’s quick casual question about this topic ensued a reflection on, indeed, how do we all cross this juncture of authenticity and technology?

A flawless AI-generated model for Guess showcases a striped maxi dress and a floral playsuit.

I’m not as steeped in fashion as I am marinated in the creative industry, having been a communications strategist for some decades now, and still at it. As such, I deal with data, analytics, and patterns of thoughts and cultures.

I think that at the base of these outcries, a mirror is being held to our face. Welcome to the emergence, embedding, and professionalization of AI in the creative industry. Happening at breakneck speed, unimaginable to most of us ordinary mortals, it also wasn’t invented yesterday. It’s been simmering under our noses while a great majority of us are busy with social media. It’s been an underground superintelligence that was ripe to go overground, is what I would think of it.

A quick trip to a site called KARTEL (AI-powered productions) and others like it tells us that the commercial production landscape has been not-so-quietly changing all along. Big brands like Sephora, Snickers, All Saints, films needing historical reenactments, and many others have trodden the AI path. AI Generalists, AI Creative Developers, and AI Directors are nascent job titles as we’re simply scraching the surface of the AI-powered creative industry.

Mango showcases its latest collection with its first-ever AI-generated campaign.
Model Mathilda Gvarliani and her digital twin. (H&M)

Humanity and technology have often been at odds with each other. Think HUMANITY on one end of the spectrum, TECHNOLOGY on the other. In the middle of these two is CREATIVITY. The creative industry, which encompasses advertising, visual arts, handcrafts, music, graphic design, filmmaking, production, and writing, to name a few.

HUMANITY is realness, values, emotions, and natural beauty. TECHNOLOGY is efficiency, expedience, and also an imagination of what’s possible beyond human capacity. Once the latter is set into motion, there’s no going back. We’ve seen this with the internet, robotics-assisted healthcare, and the logistics of everyday goods. The applications of expediency go on. Our daily lives are now measured by convenience, comforts, solutions, engagements, and attractions.

CREATIVITY has often been prone to technological developments for a few good reasons: creation takes time, equipment of the trade is expensive, experts’ man-hours are high-value, and the entire industry is naturally open to experimentation and innovation.

In that mirror AI holds up to us, we find a face in shock. And we say, how could a big brand, Guess in this case, and Vogue, a respected institution in publishing and lifestyle curation dare replace human models with AI-gen similars? The ethical debate will prove to be a garden path, one which I’ll leave, for now, to experts.

If there’s one single distillation of the juncture that humanity and technology face in this case, it is about BEAUTY STORYTELLING. Beauty that encompasses the physical, emotional, and even ideals of kindness, respect, dignity, and such.

On the aspect of physical beauty, the industry is now faced with real choices. Do you tell the beauty story at its most natural, unassisted and unenhanced way or polished and expedient with imaginative technology? We lose and gain something from each method. And there will be collateral damage on both ends.

When the creative industry turns itself more towards AI-assistance in its beauty storytelling, would we miss something? The naturalness, the slight imperfection, the flow, the evocation of feelings by the images we show. The notion that beauty isn’t perfection is what exactly makes it relatable. A purely AI-creation in visual arts or graphic design, for instance, can’t fully telegraph emotions. Tried looking at one lately?

As the creative industry faces more of these crossroad decisions between humanity and technology, it’ll be prudent to be aware of the new tools of the trade, ever-sharper, ever-imaginative, enough to decide ‘what we’re trading in place of what’.

For now, we’re all probably experiencing the ‘shock of the new’ as Robert Hughes had articulated in his 1980 documentary on the evolution of modern art. We’ll most likely get used to the new scenery. But as humans, our choice muscle may need to keep getting stronger as we go along.

This article is human-written.

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Pris Santos is a Senior Strategy Collaborator at Design For Tomorrow, working closely with Creative + Strategy Director Ric Gindap and the team in crafting brand narratives, strategies, and resonating copies.

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