Usbek & Rica – AI: is the modeling profession on the verge of extinction?

For its Sunset Dream collection aimed at teenage girls, the ready-to-wear brand Mango features a slender young woman with a tanned complexion and black hair, posing in the sun. So far, nothing really new. However, this model has a big difference compared to the Hadid and Jenner sisters: she is the work of an artificial intelligence model.

“We find neotenic criteria (child features, editor’s note), with large almond-shaped eyes, a big mouth, an extremely symmetrical face and a long neck, all the characteristics of exacerbated femininity with a diversity in the features” , observes Sylvie Borau, researcher in AI and consumer philosophy. Features “ close to perfection » which are not innocent, since they are the result of aesthetic choices on the part of creators, very happy to have access to a tailor-made malleable tool. Choices that are all the more problematic as they target an audience in “ full construction »notes the academic.

However, the trend is on the rise: over the last few months, other brands such as Levi’s, Stradivarius and even the cover of Vogue Singapore have succumbed to this new type of 3.0 model.

Artificial beauties, real precariousness

Artificial intelligence achieves better than any human the ideal of beauty that we should get closer to. “ We were already comparing ourselves to edited images and now we are going to compare ourselves to robots” alerts Sylvie Borau, who fears that AI will have the same negative effects on self-perception as its photoshopped cousins… or worse.