Death of the model: how Al threatens to reshape fashion

With H&M now using “digital twins”, catwalk stars including David Gandy and Kai-Isaiah Jamal fear what the future will bring

- BY JOE BROMLEY

London's top modelling agencies saw it coming. Four years ago, Simon Chambers, the owner of Storm Model Management — the agency that launched the careers of Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne — and director of the British Fashion Model Agents Association (BFMA), began an investigation into how artificial intelligence might alter the face of fashion and threaten one of the world's most envied occupations — the job of a model.

“We've been trying to learn as much as we can about it, because it goes back to the old saying: if it's acceptable to the buying public and if it saves a lot of money, it will probably have wings,” he says. “The question has never been if. Instead, it has always been: ‘How will it be used, and to what extent?”

The tectonic plates jerked forward at the end of March when H&M launched its “digital twin” campaign, in which models, including Mathilda Gvarliani — pictured right walking for Chanel — had Al replicas of themselves made. Unlike the host of brands and media outlets, from Marks & Spencer to SheerLuxe, which have previously banked on creating completely false AI ambassadors, H&M's pious pitch is that it will help 30 models create digital avatars of themselves this year. The models will own these, and any brand can pay to use them without the models themselves ever having to step onto set. “She's like me, without the jetlag,” Gvarliani said of her new digi-likeness.