[danso]

It's hard to imagine AI/virtual models being able to satisfy the high-end fashion industry's love for traditional pomp and pageantry. But I'd have to guess that an unlimited, cheap supply of perfect and customizable human models will unavoidably have a massive impact on the many non-A-list models who make a living doing photoshoots for unbranded campaigns, especially models who are currently used to model clothing for online sellers.

While there will likely always be added commercial value for (human) celebrity campaigns – e.g. Kanye and Gap, Jennifer Lawrence and Dior – I'm not sure how Old Navy/Banana Republic/Uniqlo/etc. would suffer much at all by having digital models for their website and in-store photography.

[TheOtherHobbes]

There are different kinds of modelling. The old paper catalog - now website - modelling has already been replaced. You can see the results all over Amazon and various merch shops. Clothes and other objects have colours and textures shopped in effortlessly.

Is that AI-able? Not yet. Making edited images look seamless is still a moderately skilled job, and AI is still struggling with basic object recognition, never mind the semantics of object presentation.

It might be possible one day, but not for a good few years.

High end modelling is about celebrity, and that's not going to be replaced any time soon.

Likewise for high end fashion photography. You can't hand something like Nick Knight's work over to an AI, because no AI has the creativity or imagination needed to make images that look like that, and engage the viewer like that.

It might be possible in principle to automate some of the more obvious fashion cliches - intensely aesthetic people with cheek bones in a variety of exotic locations - but it's harder than it looks, and the quality of manual production values will make it very hard for AI efforts to cross uncanny valley without getting stuck in it.

Attempts will also suffer from the CGI problem, where CGI turned out to be more expensive than modelling for most movies. And the results end up looking plastic and rather soulless no matter how much detail they have.

[bsder]

> And the results end up looking plastic and rather soulless no matter how much detail they have.

The Mandalorian begs to differ.

The problem was that the actor couldn't see the CGI in real-time.

Once they built full wall displays so the actors could see what they were acting to, everything improved quite dramatically.

[munificent]

As I understand it, actor performance quality wasn't the main driver of The Mandalorian's live CGI sets. It was lighting and reflections. When your main character's head is essentially a chrome ball, green screens really aren't going to cut it. They needed believable reflections and lighting and the live set gave them that.

[thu2111]

Yep, that's it. There's a cool video about it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpUI8uOsKTM

[notyourday]

> It's hard to imagine AI/virtual models being able to satisfy the high-end fashion industry's love for traditional pomp and pageantry.

That will be covered by the top 100 models of the time. Those are the ones that have millions of IG followers.

The next tiers down will absolutely be replaced. The model interviewed about it has the exact same opinion because she actually lives that industry.