Picture this: you are scrolling through Levi’s app, and are suddenly drawn to one of the models, not because of the beautiful dungarees she is wearing, but because there is something about her face that makes you feel uneasy. Her skin looks abnormally smooth, poreless and hairless. Her hair blows in multiple different directions, as if caught in a freak storm. Her eyes and facial expression are lifeless, and not in the edgy way favoured by high fashion magazines.

 Something about her is uncanny, not quite real. Indeed, it isn’t real. She was made using artificial intelligence.

On 22 March, high-quality denim brand Levi Strauss & Co announced their partnership with AI technology company Lalaland.ai, arguing that diverse models crafted by AI to replicate a diversity of body shapes and skin colours would create a more positive customer experience. While it is no doubt that customers would benefit from being represented by the brands they shop at, one can’t help but feel as though Levi’s is somehow cheating.

Co-founded in 2019 by Michael Musandu and Ugnius Rimsa, Amsterdam based company Lalaland.ai claims that their technology offers a way for brands to become ‘more inclusive, sustainable, and digital-minded…All with the help of generative AI.’ A subscription at Musandu and Rimsa’s company enables customers to edit their digital avatar’s hairstyles, body shape and skin colour, among other things, in a bid to ‘diversify the fashion industry and challenge the status quo…’ when it comes to things like representation and inclusivity.

Although one of Lalaland.ai’s creators is black himself, many people online were quick to acknowledge that Levi’s new plan to tackle diversity misses an opportunity to support the careers of real plus-sized models and people of colour. Many on Twitter saw the decision as a prime example of racism within the industry, with one user writing ‘Your models may be AI, but your racism is real.’

After serious social media criticism, on March 28, Levi’s responded with a further statement from their head of digital and emerging technology strategy Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles. It attempted to reassure customers that the programme would not replace real photoshoots or models but would simply add to them. It claimed that ‘We do not see this pilot as a means to advance diversity or as a substitute for the real action that must be taken to deliver our diversity, equality and inclusion goal and it should not have been portrayed as such.’Ultimately, the new statement expressed regret at how the original announcement was interpreted and received, but only served to bolster their original aims.

Many have been quick to note that they are substituting AI for ‘real action’, missing an opportunity to employ models who otherwise may have been struggling to find work, due to systemic racism, fatphobia and ableism in the fashion industry. 

However, Levi’s are not the first brand to use artificially generated models to sell their products, especially on social media sites such as Instagram, where influencer’s posts are becoming valuable adverts in themselves. Digitally created influencers and social media personalities such as Lil Miquela and Shudu have graced our screens for the past few years, partnering with high fashion brands to sell their products. They have even been integrated into shoots with real models. Both have been designed to look like people of colour, yet both have at least one white creator. In an New Yorker article, Lauren Michele Jackson dubbed Shudu ‘a white man’s digital projection of real-life black womanhood.’ Indeed, parallels can be drawn to Levi’s, where the question of whether it is ethical for white designers to directly profit from campaigns under the guise of diversity, is raised. Indeed, it seems that in both cases, white designers have used the industry’s attempts to diversify as a way to directly profit themselves. 

Ultimately, due to such large torrents of criticism online, it is hard to see how Levi’s can claim that using AI models would create a positive consumer experience, seen as many consumers will now be acutely aware that, instead of hiring and supporting real people who look like them, Levi’s has proudly used artificial intelligence.

We must ask if this is really the step in the right direction that it is made out to be, or whether it is in fact many steps back.