Swedish clothing retailer H&M has started rolling out what it calls “digital twins”, effectively AI-generated clones of models.
PetaPixel reported back in April that H&M was planning to make digital twins for 30 of its models, and we’re now seeing images from that project.
Indeed, the photos in this article were not shot by a photographer; instead, they were created by a machine learning AI model that has been fed real photos of the models.
Critics have argued that the technology has the potential long-term effect of wiping out photographers as well as other human creatives like makeup artists and hair stylists.
But in an Instagram post addressing the issue, H&M defended the practice.
“It’s not a question of man versus machine, I think it’s man and machine,” says H&M Chief Creative Officer Jörgen Andersson. “What the machine can do is basically amplify human creativity.”
Photographer Johnny Kangasniemi also defended the controversial tech, speaking positively about AI.
“It’s not something that I see is going to replace photography in any sense,” says Kangasniemi. “I think it’s going to be more of an extra tool.”
Not all of the comments were positive. One person asked Kangasniemi, “Can you explain your comments on photographers not being replaced more? H&M studio used to hire lots of different photographers to do e-commerce / lookbooks, so now by using AI, clearly they are starting to be replaced unless they are still using photographers’ images in the mock-ups and paying them?”
What is frightening about the images is just how difficult it is to tell the images are AI, meaning that most people will scroll past without ever realizing what they just looked at was synthetic.
The AI twins are created by taking numerous photos of the model from different angles and in different lighting. This large amount of data is then fed into a machine-learning algorithm that can reproduce images in their likeness.
H&M isn’t the first fashion brand to use AI-generated models. Mango launched a campaign featuring fake computer-made images that look like real photos and while Levi’s used AI-generated models to “increase diversity.”
Image credits: H&M