15 ms·

I am a model and I know that artificial intelligence will take my job

179 points by elorant 6y ago

Normille 6y ago
Don't worry. I'm sure there are plenty of other job opportunities available for someone with a skills portfolio consisting of looking vacuous while wearing expensive clothes.
- dang 6y ago
  "Be kind. Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ykevinator 6y ago
The rest of us have to work, and now pretty people will have to work too.
agumonkey 6y ago
the era of artificial / roboticized everything is gonna be "interesting".. we need to exist for others even if we have nothing to do (as obligations, survival or else).
pdubs1 6y ago
Pardon me for my indifference to an occupation & industry which has no net positive impact on society. An occupation, which is incredibly shallow and requires no skill. Sounds worthless and replaceable to me.
trhway 6y ago
>For one thing, digital models drastically reduce the environmental footprint associated with photo shoots and bringing clothes to market. It’s not uncommon for a model to shoot more than 50 outfits in a single day for an e-commerce shoot, and many of those samples end up in the landfills. Using 3D models would eliminate all of that. I spoke to Anastasia Edwards-Morel, a 3D fashion design expert at the design company CLO, who explained that by using 3D avatars and her company’s design software, a significant portion of the supply chain can now happen in a computer. Model is just a top of the pyramid which is being eaten by software. One can see though that that may also lead to small tech-advanced (3d printing/etc.) object "materialization" shops popping up close to consumer. While you're running your morning run and having breakfast, the outfit chosen upon waking up (based on looking at weather and your own "feel like") from a design collection just posted couple days ago (and which you can preview online as fitted right onto you instead of a model - it may look good on a model and not on you and vice versa) is getting "materialized" and delivered right to your door (and your previous ones which you don't need/want anymore are collected for recycling, refurbishing, donation, etc.).
rosywoozlechan 6y ago
Actual models are already unrealistically attractive and fit so I'm a little bit worried about generated models are going to make people feel about themselves.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  The fact that GPT-3 can write a better essay than I can has sent me into a full blown funk this last week. edit: *than I can, not "that I can", hah.
supernova87a 6y ago
Just earlier this week, I was talking with a colleague about all the hidden jobs that no longer exist because of software. And these are not jobs that dramatically went away all at once, like a team of longshoremen being cut in the movies. Think of all the teams of bookkeepers (yes, actual people who penciled numbers in books) who were obsoleted by Excel being able to let a store owner do a calculation/scenario by himself that would take accountants a week to do. Think of all the secretaries whose work disappeared (or were no longer needed in proportion to the growing economy) as soon as personal calendar software and meeting invites became common. Graphic designers / publication layout experts you would pay because you didn't have desktop publishing software. There are more jobs lost silently to these kinds of developments than any factory being shut down dramatically. (for the US at least)
- TLightful 6y ago
  Counterpoint: I'm aware of Excel giving birth to many, many accountants!
- seibelj 6y ago
  Alternatively, a lot more businesses were created because the sum total of labor required to run a business went down, so businesses that would have been unprofitable back when it took a room of bookkeepers to manage a department store can now exist. People think that economics is a zero-sum game, but the endless drive for efficiency and productivity is what makes our world possible and lifted billions out of abject poverty. It is the opposite of zero-sum.
  - jakearmitage 6y ago
    Absolutely. A friend of mine started selling her cookies online without any help from anyone tech-savvy. She found out about Wix, Canva, Stripe and a bunch of other tools and setup her own business during COVID. She's not coming back to her old job. Software empowers people.
    - mlrtime 6y ago
epx 6y ago
I am not so sure. Copying from a short horror story I wrote myself, "The level of earthly technology (...) was already advanced enough to create whole movies using digital actors exclusively, with perfect bodies and unprecedented beauty. But, for some reason, the masses still preferred flesh-and-bone actors, in spite of the costs and their erratic performance. The blurry, undefined line between the character and the human being is attractive by itself."
- trhway 6y ago
  >whole movies using digital actors exclusively, with perfect bodies and unprecedented beauty. lets make one step further - how about digital actors' images adjusted slightly for any given movie watcher. Can't be done with real people. New tech isn't always "better" (like in "better horse"), it opens/brings in new possibilities/capabilities (like in "car").
yelloweyes 6y ago
Is there really a point to rampant, non-stop technological advancements if the common people never really get to see the benefits of it? It seems like life just keeps getting harder and harder for the lower classes.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  But they do get to see them, they usually just don't notice them. Almost everyone in the developed world has a supercomputer in their pocket that acts as a flashlight and a video camera as well! Modern cars are far safer than old cars. They're faster than horses too. A modern combine harvester does the work of many people, which makes food much cheaper. There are untold small and big improvements like that that we just take for granted. GDP per capita roughly doubles in 20 years. That's the combination of all of these small and big improvements added up on a societal scale. Before industrialization it could take over 1000 years to see a similar level of improvement in the life of an average person. My grandparents had no running water. They would wash in a sauna with water from a pond or well. Famines were common at that time. People still mostly used horses for transport. Roads were not paved. Clothing was mostly self-made. Televisions didn't even exist yet. Radios were for well-off families. Compare that to today in a developed country. This rampant non-stop technological advancement is what's making life better. It's just hard to notice if you don't think about it.
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    And yet: "Looming evictions may soon make 28 million homeless in U.S., expert says" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/looming-evictions-may-soon-make-28-million-homeless-expert-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/looming-evictions-may-soon-m... You caan't live in a video game. You cannot eat an iPhone. Maslow's Hierarchy still rests on its base, and tens of millions within the US and billions worldwide live precarious existences.
    - Aerroon 6y ago
      Maslow's hierarchy of needs is far from the problem in the US. Many millions might end up being evicted but the vast majority of them will end up finding other accommodations. There's a lot of housing available in the US. It's just not cheap in the places people want to be.
talove 6y ago
IMO, maybe but unlikely any time soon. I've lived in NYC for the last decade+. Had many friends that had legitimate careers as models. Some lasted a year with just a few shoots and a self-funded trip to Paris fashion week before they quit or went into debt over it. Some have been going at it for more than a decade and you would recognize if you flipped through a fashion magazine even semi-regularly. I also work in media, date someone in fashion and have knowledge of what actually gets paid to models. While there are a rare few who find a real career out of it and rise out of the traps of shitty agencies and contracts, usually by branching out and establishing a self-brand, none of them that I know made something they can comfortably retire on just with what we would consider the job of a model. There are certainly exceptions to this but in general, if you're a fashion brand, digital or print magazine offering any type of exposure, hiring a model is inexpensive. Rarely if ever livable wages. That goes for most of the people who work on sets or for fashion shows. So with all of that preamble out of the way, what I am getting at is... 1. Coordinating an AI model, that has to wear these clothes, and that bracelet, and be on this location, or pictures with this lighting sounds complex and expensive when hiring a set to produce the real thing is a known quantity and cost virtually minimum wages. 2. There are still people who deeply care about the art of the whole thing and do most of their work for free to be supported in anyway to keep doing it. I am looking on the not so bright, bright side here but I'd like to think AI is little more of a thread than stock photography.
- thrir777 6y ago
  This. Modeling and photography are low skilled jobs, with minimal pay and long hours. Over years system became ruthlessly efficient to extract value from people. Good luck replacing that with expensive AI developers to produce fake stuff.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    I have no knowledge of the skill involved in (real life) modelling, but I do know the skill involved in professional photography is a lot higher than I fully understand. For most of us, photography is just point the phone and tap the screen, without really giving much thought to lighting (colour/s, fill/spot combinations), scene composition, lenses, and probably a lot of things I don’t even have names for given the stuff I’ve listed is stuff I only know about from 3D modelling. And conversely, the end users of a future AI synth of a model won’t be paying directly for expensive AI developers, any more than the average visitor of thispersondoesnotexist.com
Apocryphon 6y ago
Ah, the realization of this Al Pacino classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuAjeuKXX7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuAjeuKXX7c
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  For small values of "classic".
kipply 6y ago
there is also rosebud.ai which creates images of clothing on (deepfake) models for businesses. It's supposed to save time and possibly money on photographers/models. Really excited for this to become viable for small businesses <3
EGreg 6y ago
Can someone tell me why models are so in demand? Can’t people remix existing photos and so on? There are tons of stock photos now too. It’s not like they need a new model for every time they show a watch.
- realtalk_sp 6y ago
  What's considered aesthetically pleasing continually evolves over time. There are underlying trends in physical beauty that resemble what we see in fashion, art, music, etc. Humans also have a quite a lot of control over much of their appearance with hair styling, makeup, and (increasingly) cosmetic surgery. This, combined with the ageism inherent to modeling, adds up to fairly sustained demand.
- umeshunni 6y ago
  That's kind of how it works these days. Photographers take a single photo of a model wearing a particular style of outfit and other similar outfits are photoshopped in. So, instead to taking a photo for each outfit and for each variant of the outfit, they just take one.
- dfxm12 6y ago
  Having a good model can set your photos apart from stock photos, even if they are doctored a bit. This is especially important if you don't have someone on hand with good photoshop skills (which is probably also in demand). I guess this is all dependent on how "in demand" models are...
- flr03 6y ago
  Well at least one of the reasons is that every 3 to 6 months fashion brands release a new collection. They need fresh photos to advertise that.
- notyourday 6y ago
  > Can someone tell me why models are so in demand? Can’t people remix existing photos and so on? There are tons of stock photos now too. It’s not like they need a new model for every time they show a watch. Usage rights. Time of models and photographers is cheap - for below supermodel catwalk class it is less than $150/h including the overhead. For catalog/commercial models $50/h including overhead is a good pay. Buying out of usage rights is expensive. Worldwide buyout for a dozen images for 1 years could easily be $50,000. So instead they get those 12 images for that specific usage type (online) for the time rate + $1
dfilppi 6y ago
You had a good run
DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
My first interpretation of the headline was: a self-aware deep-learning model predicted another deep-learning model to replace it.
- the_other 6y ago
  42.
- tolbish 6y ago
  You're not entirely wrong.
- jjk166 6y ago
  Oh cool we live in a Douglass Adams book. Oh no we live in a Douglass Adams book!
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    You have two s's too many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams
    - karmakaze 6y ago
      Ours is an imperfect copy.
- esfandia 6y ago
  Yes, I thought maybe it was another article written by GPT-3.
kingkawn 6y ago
These are impressive but lifeless, and nobody wants to feel lifeless. It will not take hold other than as novelty.
nitwit005 6y ago
It seems more like the job of "Model" is being replaced by "Instagram Influencer". Companies can get attractive people on Instagram (possibly a CG person) to show off the clothing for them, and seemingly quite cheaply.
- miguelmota 6y ago
  An example of a completely AI generated Instagram "influencer" is Miquela (@lilmiquela) with 2.5M followers https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela
alex_g 6y ago
My first thought at seeing this title was that it was an autobiography of a machine learning model.
curiousllama 6y ago
This is one of the few "AI will kill X" that I can see (if the article's claims are true). This wouldn't just impact models - it would automate the entire shooting process. Models are cheap, but the overhead of the process is expensive. Hiring a photographer, lighting person, studio space, model, clothes and backdrop; coordinating with relatively high-paid internal stakeholders (execs, designers, etc.); and developing/touching up photos after... Big processes add up. There's a need. At the low and medium end, this could totally replace the shoot process. Presumably, designers would have a basic version of the software in their standard toolkit (you can see it in a catalog before it's shot - talk about sales!), so the marginal cost would be 0. There's no differentiator - no friction. If the software's output is comparable to a shoot for a department store, the there's a real solution. Why would I ever bother with a physical shoot?
- zippy5 6y ago
  Isn't this basically Instagram?
aSplash0fDerp 6y ago
If you`re one of the parties on the leading edge of the transition to "artificial beauty", the champagne will continue to flow. Beyond the fad and hype sales cycles of fashion perhaps art will flourish again with all of the excess natural beauty that is still in demand. Its still timeless!
nabla9 6y ago
I wonder what happens to porn industry.
qwe098cube 6y ago
i can see that software will also eat the fashion industry how ever not primarily with AI first but CGI+AI. I can imagine that there will be a transition from hollywood like VFX artists from film/gaming to fashion if the demand for CG models is there. Putting real life actors in AAA games has been a thing for years at this point, but now the graphics are so advanced that it will look completely photo real within the next couple console generations. Those game companies put real life actors in their movies because of the audience recognizes them. Same thing will likely happen for fashion as well. If you buy famous models'/celebrities' digital model you can reuse and license that however you want.
Animats 6y ago
It's already here. See Marvelous Designer[1] and CLO[2]. These are CAD programs for designing clothes. They make both a 3D model for viewing and patterns for cutting and sewing. When design moves to CAD, the designer already has a 3D model before the clothing is made. So, for catalog photos, there's no need for human models. Mostly. Those two companies need better hair shaders. [1] https://marvelousdesigner.com/ https://marvelousdesigner.com/ [2] https://www.clo3d.com https://www.clo3d.com
adwi 6y ago
My opinion as a tech-inclined person who works with many fashion/beauty clients in a creative capacity: fashion, in general, doesn’t understand tech, and have been consistently 5-10 years late adopting The New. The industry continues to be centered around still photographs—generally for the average campaign 90% of the budget/crew will go to the photographs, and video will be thrown in as an afterthought, even though it is an order of magnitude more difficult to create—and nearly exclusively those stills will be experienced on a computer that is told to show that same frame 60 times every second forever. My clients are just barely starting to understand how video works. To try to get them to wade into 3D—and not just as a splashy one-off tool for attention, but for the actual day to day creation of hundreds of e-comm images/season—I don’t see this happening for a long time.
- MeetingsBrowser 6y ago
  I am nowhere near the fashion industry, but my kneejerk reaction is that the industry might be slow to adopt technology because they don't have that much to gain. If they are very familiar with still photographs and (I assume) can somewhat predict how still photographs will be perceived by the market, what is the incentive to switch to something new? As a consumer, my guess would be that a video or 3D display would not create a huge spike in revenue. In fact, if done poorly I could even see it having the opposite effect. So what is the incentive to invest time and money into switching to something new and risky? ------- CGI models however seem to be a different story. The cost saving aspect is clear cut and I as the consumer likely won't even realize anything has changed.
  - adwi 6y ago
    Those are good points, but fashion exists in a logic-adjacent (interesting, infuriating) intersection of Art and Commerce; on a big set you can almost map where someone is on that continuum by their order on the call sheet. On one hand, it makes total sense to ask if embracing 3D stuff, or pushing (to my mind) a more appropriate use of the digital mediums in which we create and experience most things will lead to spike in revenue: If you do it poorly (read: solution looking for a problem) I wouldn’t expect that to make much of a leap in any real metrics—and if companies are trying to pass off images on the wrong side of the uncanny valley that’d be more likely to hurt than help. But it’s the Art that actually sells the “lifestyle” (read: clothes), and if you can create a gobsmacking incredible experience that makes people feel things you will absolutely see that in metrics and earned media and attention... There are so many interesting technologies that are widely accessible today that fashion companies aren’t embracing because 1) they don’t know to look for them and 2) they don’t understand how they work. Small example: I absolutely blew a (publicaly-traded) client’s mind showing them a projection mapping concept... 2 years ago, well after the tools made it a 15 minute job they could have gotten the savvy intern to execute.
FearNotDaniel 6y ago
Nonsense. Maybe the generic low-end catalogue models will be replaced by some kind of AI but it definitely won't happen in high fashion. I've worked for some of these organisations and it's ALL about the in-person social aspects of the industry. Catwalk shows are an event with real people, not because it's the most effective way to showcase the physical items but because it creates a buzz that everyone wants to be a part of. The business thrives on parties and bars and muses and the backstage chaos, frantically pulling everything together at the last minute so they can glide out there and look serene for a few brief seconds. The designers and stylists and hair and makeup and accessories people love working with the girls - even the difficult diva types who turn up late and think they own the whole show - because it brings fun and spontaneity and joy and relationship building and uncertainty, the dangerous unpredictability, just on the threshold of losing control, is a big part of the energy and many people in the business have their entire 24/7 social life wrapped up completely in their careers. These techno "models" are a gimmick that will be used for as long as they grab headlines but in the long run, fashion people love people (each other, not necessarily their consumers) and - this may be hard for many IT types to comprehend - the business will always thrive on those people who are able to walk into a room and move around and pull faces that grab attention in surprising and unexpected ways, especially if those people are also enjoyable to work with in a way that some CGI never could be.
- jeswin 6y ago
  > this may be hard for many IT types to comprehend Save the condescension, this wasn't written by an 'IT type' or published on a tech journal. All industries that got disrupted by more modern technology came up with arguments similar to the ones you brought up - bookstores vs amazon, brick-and-mortar stores vs ecommerce, face-to face meetings vs video calls, film vs digital, newspapers vs internet. There will always be demand for high end fashion, but eventually it'll get relegated to a niche.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Yes. The "human factor" was supposed to have saved all those industries. Nope.
thewarrior 6y ago
I recently started brainstorming with my brother about what fields are actually likely to be disrupted by AI technologies that exist today and the list was quite surprising and unlike what I had seen in the media. The impact is likely to start in the creative industries. Entrepreneurs feel free to steal : 1. Hollywood in the Cloud : The progress of computer vision algorithms, game engines like Unreal and massive computation in the cloud mean that in 25 years time you maybe able to produce a Hollywood quality movie by writing code. Unreal engine will render the backgrounds, Deep neural nets will generate the actors voices and faces and code will be used to stitch everything together. This may also include the production of background scores by neural nets primed on music in similar scenes. The number of people needed to produce a film will be cut by 10x and we will see an explosion in film making. Tik Tok is an early example of this. 2. Digital Models: This is connected to the above. You will also see digital models being used on billboards and news readers will be replaced by models like GPT-3 that convert data into narratives and then they are read by digital newsreaders. They may even make it interactive by reading out the most popular tweets or having fake discussion between AI models with different personalities. 3.Lawyers : GPT-3 has given me a lot of confidence in predicting a major disruption to legal research. You can probably semi automate case research and you don't need armies of junior lawyers or para legals to fight cases. 4.Accountants: This relies on the continued improvement in computer vision in the ability to read and interpret printed invoices. More and more transactions will happen via APIs and be shepherded by digital accountants too. 5.Programmers: I am less sure of how programmers will be replaced but there are some obvious avenues. Natural language interfaces could make most front end work obsolete. You don't really need an Uber app if GPT-3 on steroids can understand exactly what you want and then produce a widget on the fly that shows you the appropriate information on demand. Most simple apps will be folded into natural language assistants which means that front end work will go down. What does exist will be designed with the assistance of AI tools. The backend work could also increasingly be subsumed into making a knowledge base that can learn and respond to intelligent queries. 6.Therapists: Smarter NLP models could act as digital therapists. People maybe more comfortable talking to a digital therapist and not be judged by an actual person. They can be given digital bodies and voices to make them more realistic. GPT-3 is way ahead of ELIZA and even in the original ELIZA studies people became quite attached to it. Technology is making people lonely and people may turn to technology to fix it. 7.Fake twitch streamers / Cam models: Synthesis algorithms could become so advanced that some people could become more attractive versions of themselves and create fake model personas that make a lot of money on websites like Twitch. Our economy and education system are probably unprepared for the scale of disruptions we may see.
acangiano 6y ago
Natural aging will impact you much faster than AI.
FiddlerClamp 6y ago
Presaged eerily in 1981 by Michael Crichton's terrible movie "Looker": https://youtu.be/2IZfSr891bE https://youtu.be/2IZfSr891bE (warning, nudity) Two additional scenes stand out: 1. The protagonist watches a prototype perfume commercial with eye-tracking glasses, and the computer ends up superimposing the closing logo over the part he watched the most often (this being 1981, I'm sure you can imagine...) 2. The implication that the computer can determine the 'perfect' poses and actions for optimal viewer response ("Not enough body twist according to the computer"), and the physical model having to contort herself to fit the ideal (you can see a few seconds of this at 0:39 in the trailer - https://youtu.be/yoT-r1slAZ4 https://youtu.be/yoT-r1slAZ4)
eplanit 6y ago
I was actually hoping that at the end, it would be revealed that the article was written by a bot.
Imnimo 6y ago
I think the biggest potential for AI in fashion will be to allow a customer to do "virtual try-on" - see a clothing item rendered on the customer's own body. Maybe eventually we'll reach a point where it's way cheaper to synthesize a photograph of a model wearing an item, but how expensive could those really be to make using a human being and a camera? But if you can synthesize a model wearing a shirt, it's not that big of a step to instead synthesize ME wearing that shirt. I can't easily get pictures of me wearing every shirt in the store the traditional way, so even an expensive, slow or flawed AI system to accomplish that would still have value.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  I suspect I would buy significantly fewer clothes online if I saw a picture of myself in them first. The model sells me on it because somewhere deep in my brain I think maybe those clothes will make me look like the model. As a customer, I would definitely be better off with an AI Selfie - I'd be happier with my purchases more often and maybe even get some sort of hidden psychological benefit to not looking at unrealistic model bodies. But I'm not sure retailers would stand to benefit much.
Townley 6y ago
I was skeptical, but while I was reading the article my wife looked over my shoulder at the photo on top of the article. Unprompted, she asked "Wow, she's absolutely gorgeous. Who is she?" We might be further along towards CGI models than I thought
- Talanes 6y ago
  The photo at the top of the article is the author, not the CGI model.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Maybe that will help with the model scouting -> human trafficking pipeline.
hammock 6y ago
Modeling is an art form. In my opinion it's about as likely to be taken over by AI as any other art form. We have seen AI (or CGI) being used increasingly in film, music and writing, but the highest forms of these arts are not AI, unless they are AI for AI's sake (i.e. as a novelty). A fintech firm might now be producing daily stock summaries from AI. A Hollywood studio might make use of CGI in its movies. But the highest art form still makes without AI and will continue so for many decades to come.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  The ... value ... in at least fine or collectable art (as opposed to mere mass entertainment) or other assets (wine, ancient artefacts, first editions and original manuscripts, etc.) lies largely, though not necessarily entirely, in uniqueness, particularly in status signalling value, as a Veblen good. Costs of production and provenance here are actually favourable characteristics and establish signalling capability. There is at least some likelihood that it's precisely the elements or aspects which are not automatable, or which are not automated, which will achive higher status.
ansible 6y ago
That article, and the related one about Miquela Sousa [1] now have me thinking in several directions. 1. How long before someone plugs in a GPT-3 backed chatbot to handle the comments for these virtual models? Eventually, AI powered voice synthesis, lip-sync and animation (helped by a kinematics model) will handle basic animation, to allow real-time chat with a "virtual model" who can walk and talk. This could be my big ticket to Internet fame and fortune! 2. And then someone will want to marry one, a la William Gibson's novel Idoru. It'll be a real fight when true AGIs are asking for equal rights. But how about before then when someone wants to extend rights to a fancy chatbot with an animation package that we know isn't sentient? Will forming a corporation help or hurt that effort? We do live in interesting times. [1] https://www.vogue.com/article/lilmiquela-miquela-sousa-instagram-it-girl-digital-simulation https://www.vogue.com/article/lilmiquela-miquela-sousa-insta...
- karmakaze 6y ago
  Why do we even need all that? My exposure to modelling is what I see them modelling, typically garments or accessories. There's no dialogue in spoken or written form. Software has getting/gotten extremely good at mimicry. Natural motion and facial expressions are in development. I really don't see these things as being that far off into the future where the human is just moving a mouse/hand to find the motion and expressions for a specific sequence. Video game avatars are the best indicator. If you go back 5, 10, 15 years and compare those to what we can do now then extrapolate 5-15 years.
  - ansible 6y ago
    I was thinking in terms of the modern (2020) "influencer" lifestyle, and making an entire fake online persona, not just generating pictures.
wwarner 6y ago
I think the article is hyperbole. 120 years ago, photography changed painting and today AI is going to change photography. It might be, just as with modernist painting, that freely available perfection creates a desire for distilled humanity that can't (yet) be captured by AI. I think there is a fairly huge middle ground. I wish that REAL models would digitally represent themselves as 3D meshes, so that I could preview digital clothing on them. That would really sell clothes man.
jfernandez 6y ago
Wow, so many questions and thoughts this article raises in me. The biggest takeaway for me was that this technology will likely naturally evolve to seeing ourselves in the content and clothing we want. Maybe it's a bit narcissistic to declare publicly, but I have personally seen through my own work the march towards personalization: what's more personal than seeing yourself everywhere doing everything?
bayouborne 6y ago
"What if every time you shopped online you could see yourself in the clothes?" What if every time you shopped online you could see a version of yourself you'd indicated you want to be (via a thousand small web interactions) in those clothes?
- namenotrequired 6y ago
  Taking that idea a step further, what if every time I wrote a comment online I could see a version of my comment that the person I want to be would write?
MattGaiser 6y ago
I can see models being eliminated just because operating with them is politically dicey and fraught with ethical issues. So many stories of abuse and mistreatment and them eating tissue paper or being sexualized at 14 keep periodically occurring that eventually enough people will just say forget it and use digital creations.
- munificent 6y ago
  Conversely, I can see models not being eliminated. Because the people in power with money and choosing where to spend it would rather spend it on pretty women they can creep on than throwing it at a few nerds and a supercomputer.
felipemnoa 6y ago
I'm not sure I agree with this. Just like people still like to go to live concerts I think that people will still like real live models. And knowing that a real live model has a limited life span will make them way more interesting while in their prime. Besides, what makes a person quite interesting many times is not necessarily only how they look but how they live their lives. I do agree that AI models may/can become huge. But there will still be plenty of room for human ones. It almost feels that if AI models became prevalent the result would be to make some human models even more interesting. This is just a gut feeling of course.
deleted 6y ago
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ickwabe 6y ago
I think many of these comnments are missing the broader implications for the fashion modeling world in general. Right now there are a lot of folks that are not models tied into this as well: photographers, lighting and set people, makeup, dressers, travel arrangers, fixers, etcs. I can easily see a near future with the equivalent of Unreal Engine for modling. All sets, lighting, makeup, AND people in picture will be life-like. There will be easily configurable random but realistic auto-posing, etc. The jobs will all become highly comodified down to low paying jobs for long hours much like the video game industry is today. And none of the afore mentioned jobs or attendent costs will be required. As for consumers wanting to "know" the real models and their lives and advantures? Ok well, I'll get off your lawn grandpa. If current trends contue, none of that will matter. Folks already form para-relationships with digital/fantasy people (re: go to any cosplay convention). So the models not being "real" will pose no barrier in the long run.
oh_sigh 6y ago
This is for the best. It seems especially damaging to the formation of a fully actualized human to derive your living merely on being born looking a certain way. Maybe I'm wrong, but is there any particular skill to being a model?
CyberDildonics 6y ago
Age will come for it sooner than 'AI'
jkaving 6y ago
As others have commented there are lots of costs and logistical complications involved in a traditional photo shoot. You need to have all the garments of the outfit, the model, the photographer and all support staff in the same place at the same time. Replacing this with all digital models and clothes would be a big cost reduction. However, it is still relatively hard to render photo-realistic faces and there's still a long way until all clothes are available as 3D models with realistic simulation of fabrics etc. But there are already solutions being used today that achieve some of the benefits without using completely generated content. Looklet[1] provides a system where each garment is shot individually on a mannequin. This is done by a couple of operators in a custom studio, typically placed in a warehouse or similar where samples are received. The images are then combined with other garment images and previously shot images of models to produce photo-realistic catalog images without the need for a traditional photo shoot. The web page has sample images and a list of retailers using this technology. Take a look at e.g. Saks Off 5th's[2] catalog and see if you can spot the images that have been produced in this way. [1] https://www.looklet.com https://www.looklet.com [2] https://www.saksoff5th.com/c/women/apparel https://www.saksoff5th.com/c/women/apparel
627467 6y ago
This reminds me of another article on IKEA's catalogue: at least 75% those photos are 3D renders[0] I can definitely see how a major fast-fashion brand can adopt this practice. Won't kill Paris and NYC fashion week, but certainly will decrease the number of models that are currently paid for more trivial modelling jobs. [0] https://kotaku.com/most-pics-in-ikea-catalogues-arent-photos-theyre-3d-re-1627713133 https://kotaku.com/most-pics-in-ikea-catalogues-arent-photos...
- 627467 6y ago
  When I say Paris and NYC fashion week won't be kill I mean: the more artistic and high aspirational side of fashion will always be driven by humans (IMO) and humans will want to work with other humans. Not a fashion designer but I suspect it is hard for you to design clothes for a digital human to wear. I mean, if you're a game designer maybe you're moved by that. But not sure a fashion designer would.
renewiltord 6y ago
PlaceIt.net does this for lots of things. Love it.
vinniejames 6y ago
Influencers will take your job well before AI does.
YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago
>> The company uses generative adversarial networks (GANs), which is a type of machine learning, a subset of A.I. "Subfield" is more correct but it's interesting that a model (and that's not a language model) gets the relation between neural nets, machine learning and AI right, when the majority of the so-called tech press gets it consistenty wrong, e.g. using AI to refer to deep learning in a kind of reverse-synecdoche.
aaron695 6y ago
No. This childish extrapolation to the far future is cheap. Lets talk about something useful and hard like the first step. Will it be stock photography or voice actors? Is there an earlier step? Will it initially create a new industry as GAN humans become cheap? Then we can all smoke a doobie and discus whether future humans will masturbate to AI generated images or our brains and culture won't allow it.
Daub 6y ago
On a related subject, most of the images in an IKEA catalogue are now entirely digitally generated. One reason this is so is to allow for slightly different content to be delivered country to country (change of wall colour, different wall furniture etc). Some details here: https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/see-how-ikea-3d-models-the-rooms-in-their-catalogs/ https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/see-how-ikea-3d... What remains to be considered is human judgement. But it won't be long. There has been some research on automating the aesthetic placement of the camera within the scene... automatic composition. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9112197 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9112197 As a painter, I certainly know there are rules, albeit very 'floppy' ones.
web007 6y ago
The self-description of "Shudu Gram" as "world's first digital supermodel" ignores the history of Lara Croft's spread in The Face magazine (in Versace, amongst others), or the likes of Hatsune Miku and more Japanese idoru.
abeppu 6y ago
A side question: do people want digital models that look like real people? Shudu and her peers _look_ CGI, and I think that's deliberate. Compare the Shudu instagram with the output of a modern GAN. I think this is likely an intentional aesthetic choice. What if part of the appeal of a digital model is it can look both like and not like a person, in a way that is controllable and expressive? A separate question from the aesthetics is, could it be better to "objectify" something that's already an object, than to do that to a real person? https://www.instagram.com/p/BnGmYwzF6nR/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BnGmYwzF6nR/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
mesozoic 6y ago
Age will take her job but yeah AI will take away the job of model for the most part when not at in person events. An AI can't ever really replace the pheromone response at those I think.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

179 points by elorant 6y ago

Don't worry. I'm sure there are plenty of other job opportunities available for someone with a skills portfolio consisting of looking vacuous while wearing expensive clothes.

dang 6y ago
"Be kind. Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ykevinator 6y ago

The rest of us have to work, and now pretty people will have to work too.

agumonkey 6y ago

the era of artificial / roboticized everything is gonna be "interesting".. we need to exist for others even if we have nothing to do (as obligations, survival or else).

pdubs1 6y ago

Pardon me for my indifference to an occupation & industry which has no net positive impact on society. An occupation, which is incredibly shallow and requires no skill. Sounds worthless and replaceable to me.

trhway 6y ago

>For one thing, digital models drastically reduce the environmental footprint associated with photo shoots and bringing clothes to market. It’s not uncommon for a model to shoot more than 50 outfits in a single day for an e-commerce shoot, and many of those samples end up in the landfills. Using 3D models would eliminate all of that. I spoke to Anastasia Edwards-Morel, a 3D fashion design expert at the design company CLO, who explained that by using 3D avatars and her company’s design software, a significant portion of the supply chain can now happen in a computer. Model is just a top of the pyramid which is being eaten by software. One can see though that that may also lead to small tech-advanced (3d printing/etc.) object "materialization" shops popping up close to consumer. While you're running your morning run and having breakfast, the outfit chosen upon waking up (based on looking at weather and your own "feel like") from a design collection just posted couple days ago (and which you can preview online as fitted right onto you instead of a model - it may look good on a model and not on you and vice versa) is getting "materialized" and delivered right to your door (and your previous ones which you don't need/want anymore are collected for recycling, refurbishing, donation, etc.).

rosywoozlechan 6y ago

Actual models are already unrealistically attractive and fit so I'm a little bit worried about generated models are going to make people feel about themselves.

supernova87a 6y ago
The fact that GPT-3 can write a better essay than I can has sent me into a full blown funk this last week. edit: *than I can, not "that I can", hah.

supernova87a 6y ago

Just earlier this week, I was talking with a colleague about all the hidden jobs that no longer exist because of software. And these are not jobs that dramatically went away all at once, like a team of longshoremen being cut in the movies. Think of all the teams of bookkeepers (yes, actual people who penciled numbers in books) who were obsoleted by Excel being able to let a store owner do a calculation/scenario by himself that would take accountants a week to do. Think of all the secretaries whose work disappeared (or were no longer needed in proportion to the growing economy) as soon as personal calendar software and meeting invites became common. Graphic designers / publication layout experts you would pay because you didn't have desktop publishing software. There are more jobs lost silently to these kinds of developments than any factory being shut down dramatically. (for the US at least)

TLightful 6y ago
Counterpoint: I'm aware of Excel giving birth to many, many accountants!
seibelj 6y ago
Alternatively, a lot more businesses were created because the sum total of labor required to run a business went down, so businesses that would have been unprofitable back when it took a room of bookkeepers to manage a department store can now exist. People think that economics is a zero-sum game, but the endless drive for efficiency and productivity is what makes our world possible and lifted billions out of abject poverty. It is the opposite of zero-sum.
- jakearmitage 6y ago
  Absolutely. A friend of mine started selling her cookies online without any help from anyone tech-savvy. She found out about Wix, Canva, Stripe and a bunch of other tools and setup her own business during COVID. She's not coming back to her old job. Software empowers people.
  - mlrtime 6y ago

epx 6y ago

I am not so sure. Copying from a short horror story I wrote myself, "The level of earthly technology (...) was already advanced enough to create whole movies using digital actors exclusively, with perfect bodies and unprecedented beauty. But, for some reason, the masses still preferred flesh-and-bone actors, in spite of the costs and their erratic performance. The blurry, undefined line between the character and the human being is attractive by itself."

trhway 6y ago
>whole movies using digital actors exclusively, with perfect bodies and unprecedented beauty. lets make one step further - how about digital actors' images adjusted slightly for any given movie watcher. Can't be done with real people. New tech isn't always "better" (like in "better horse"), it opens/brings in new possibilities/capabilities (like in "car").

yelloweyes 6y ago

Is there really a point to rampant, non-stop technological advancements if the common people never really get to see the benefits of it? It seems like life just keeps getting harder and harder for the lower classes.

Aerroon 6y ago
But they do get to see them, they usually just don't notice them. Almost everyone in the developed world has a supercomputer in their pocket that acts as a flashlight and a video camera as well! Modern cars are far safer than old cars. They're faster than horses too. A modern combine harvester does the work of many people, which makes food much cheaper. There are untold small and big improvements like that that we just take for granted. GDP per capita roughly doubles in 20 years. That's the combination of all of these small and big improvements added up on a societal scale. Before industrialization it could take over 1000 years to see a similar level of improvement in the life of an average person. My grandparents had no running water. They would wash in a sauna with water from a pond or well. Famines were common at that time. People still mostly used horses for transport. Roads were not paved. Clothing was mostly self-made. Televisions didn't even exist yet. Radios were for well-off families. Compare that to today in a developed country. This rampant non-stop technological advancement is what's making life better. It's just hard to notice if you don't think about it.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  And yet: "Looming evictions may soon make 28 million homeless in U.S., expert says" https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/looming-evictions-may-soon-make-28-million-homeless-expert-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/10/looming-evictions-may-soon-m... You caan't live in a video game. You cannot eat an iPhone. Maslow's Hierarchy still rests on its base, and tens of millions within the US and billions worldwide live precarious existences.
  - Aerroon 6y ago
    Maslow's hierarchy of needs is far from the problem in the US. Many millions might end up being evicted but the vast majority of them will end up finding other accommodations. There's a lot of housing available in the US. It's just not cheap in the places people want to be.

talove 6y ago

IMO, maybe but unlikely any time soon. I've lived in NYC for the last decade+. Had many friends that had legitimate careers as models. Some lasted a year with just a few shoots and a self-funded trip to Paris fashion week before they quit or went into debt over it. Some have been going at it for more than a decade and you would recognize if you flipped through a fashion magazine even semi-regularly. I also work in media, date someone in fashion and have knowledge of what actually gets paid to models. While there are a rare few who find a real career out of it and rise out of the traps of shitty agencies and contracts, usually by branching out and establishing a self-brand, none of them that I know made something they can comfortably retire on just with what we would consider the job of a model. There are certainly exceptions to this but in general, if you're a fashion brand, digital or print magazine offering any type of exposure, hiring a model is inexpensive. Rarely if ever livable wages. That goes for most of the people who work on sets or for fashion shows. So with all of that preamble out of the way, what I am getting at is... 1. Coordinating an AI model, that has to wear these clothes, and that bracelet, and be on this location, or pictures with this lighting sounds complex and expensive when hiring a set to produce the real thing is a known quantity and cost virtually minimum wages. 2. There are still people who deeply care about the art of the whole thing and do most of their work for free to be supported in anyway to keep doing it. I am looking on the not so bright, bright side here but I'd like to think AI is little more of a thread than stock photography.

thrir777 6y ago
This. Modeling and photography are low skilled jobs, with minimal pay and long hours. Over years system became ruthlessly efficient to extract value from people. Good luck replacing that with expensive AI developers to produce fake stuff.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I have no knowledge of the skill involved in (real life) modelling, but I do know the skill involved in professional photography is a lot higher than I fully understand. For most of us, photography is just point the phone and tap the screen, without really giving much thought to lighting (colour/s, fill/spot combinations), scene composition, lenses, and probably a lot of things I don’t even have names for given the stuff I’ve listed is stuff I only know about from 3D modelling. And conversely, the end users of a future AI synth of a model won’t be paying directly for expensive AI developers, any more than the average visitor of thispersondoesnotexist.com

Apocryphon 6y ago

Ah, the realization of this Al Pacino classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuAjeuKXX7c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuAjeuKXX7c

dredmorbius 6y ago
For small values of "classic".

kipply 6y ago

there is also rosebud.ai which creates images of clothing on (deepfake) models for businesses. It's supposed to save time and possibly money on photographers/models. Really excited for this to become viable for small businesses <3

EGreg 6y ago

Can someone tell me why models are so in demand? Can’t people remix existing photos and so on? There are tons of stock photos now too. It’s not like they need a new model for every time they show a watch.

realtalk_sp 6y ago
What's considered aesthetically pleasing continually evolves over time. There are underlying trends in physical beauty that resemble what we see in fashion, art, music, etc. Humans also have a quite a lot of control over much of their appearance with hair styling, makeup, and (increasingly) cosmetic surgery. This, combined with the ageism inherent to modeling, adds up to fairly sustained demand.
umeshunni 6y ago
That's kind of how it works these days. Photographers take a single photo of a model wearing a particular style of outfit and other similar outfits are photoshopped in. So, instead to taking a photo for each outfit and for each variant of the outfit, they just take one.
dfxm12 6y ago
Having a good model can set your photos apart from stock photos, even if they are doctored a bit. This is especially important if you don't have someone on hand with good photoshop skills (which is probably also in demand). I guess this is all dependent on how "in demand" models are...
flr03 6y ago
Well at least one of the reasons is that every 3 to 6 months fashion brands release a new collection. They need fresh photos to advertise that.
notyourday 6y ago
> Can someone tell me why models are so in demand? Can’t people remix existing photos and so on? There are tons of stock photos now too. It’s not like they need a new model for every time they show a watch. Usage rights. Time of models and photographers is cheap - for below supermodel catwalk class it is less than $150/h including the overhead. For catalog/commercial models $50/h including overhead is a good pay. Buying out of usage rights is expensive. Worldwide buyout for a dozen images for 1 years could easily be $50,000. So instead they get those 12 images for that specific usage type (online) for the time rate + $1

dfilppi 6y ago

You had a good run

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago

My first interpretation of the headline was: a self-aware deep-learning model predicted another deep-learning model to replace it.

the_other 6y ago
42.
tolbish 6y ago
You're not entirely wrong.
jjk166 6y ago
Oh cool we live in a Douglass Adams book. Oh no we live in a Douglass Adams book!
- jacquesm 6y ago
  You have two s's too many. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Adams
  - karmakaze 6y ago
    Ours is an imperfect copy.
esfandia 6y ago
Yes, I thought maybe it was another article written by GPT-3.

kingkawn 6y ago

These are impressive but lifeless, and nobody wants to feel lifeless. It will not take hold other than as novelty.

nitwit005 6y ago

It seems more like the job of "Model" is being replaced by "Instagram Influencer". Companies can get attractive people on Instagram (possibly a CG person) to show off the clothing for them, and seemingly quite cheaply.

miguelmota 6y ago
An example of a completely AI generated Instagram "influencer" is Miquela (@lilmiquela) with 2.5M followers https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela https://www.instagram.com/lilmiquela

alex_g 6y ago

My first thought at seeing this title was that it was an autobiography of a machine learning model.

curiousllama 6y ago

This is one of the few "AI will kill X" that I can see (if the article's claims are true). This wouldn't just impact models - it would automate the entire shooting process. Models are cheap, but the overhead of the process is expensive. Hiring a photographer, lighting person, studio space, model, clothes and backdrop; coordinating with relatively high-paid internal stakeholders (execs, designers, etc.); and developing/touching up photos after... Big processes add up. There's a need. At the low and medium end, this could totally replace the shoot process. Presumably, designers would have a basic version of the software in their standard toolkit (you can see it in a catalog before it's shot - talk about sales!), so the marginal cost would be 0. There's no differentiator - no friction. If the software's output is comparable to a shoot for a department store, the there's a real solution. Why would I ever bother with a physical shoot?

zippy5 6y ago
Isn't this basically Instagram?

aSplash0fDerp 6y ago

If you`re one of the parties on the leading edge of the transition to "artificial beauty", the champagne will continue to flow. Beyond the fad and hype sales cycles of fashion perhaps art will flourish again with all of the excess natural beauty that is still in demand. Its still timeless!

nabla9 6y ago

I wonder what happens to porn industry.

qwe098cube 6y ago

i can see that software will also eat the fashion industry how ever not primarily with AI first but CGI+AI. I can imagine that there will be a transition from hollywood like VFX artists from film/gaming to fashion if the demand for CG models is there. Putting real life actors in AAA games has been a thing for years at this point, but now the graphics are so advanced that it will look completely photo real within the next couple console generations. Those game companies put real life actors in their movies because of the audience recognizes them. Same thing will likely happen for fashion as well. If you buy famous models'/celebrities' digital model you can reuse and license that however you want.

Animats 6y ago

It's already here. See Marvelous Designer[1] and CLO[2]. These are CAD programs for designing clothes. They make both a 3D model for viewing and patterns for cutting and sewing. When design moves to CAD, the designer already has a 3D model before the clothing is made. So, for catalog photos, there's no need for human models. Mostly. Those two companies need better hair shaders. [1] https://marvelousdesigner.com/ https://marvelousdesigner.com/ [2] https://www.clo3d.com https://www.clo3d.com

adwi 6y ago

My opinion as a tech-inclined person who works with many fashion/beauty clients in a creative capacity: fashion, in general, doesn’t understand tech, and have been consistently 5-10 years late adopting The New. The industry continues to be centered around still photographs—generally for the average campaign 90% of the budget/crew will go to the photographs, and video will be thrown in as an afterthought, even though it is an order of magnitude more difficult to create—and nearly exclusively those stills will be experienced on a computer that is told to show that same frame 60 times every second forever. My clients are just barely starting to understand how video works. To try to get them to wade into 3D—and not just as a splashy one-off tool for attention, but for the actual day to day creation of hundreds of e-comm images/season—I don’t see this happening for a long time.

MeetingsBrowser 6y ago
I am nowhere near the fashion industry, but my kneejerk reaction is that the industry might be slow to adopt technology because they don't have that much to gain. If they are very familiar with still photographs and (I assume) can somewhat predict how still photographs will be perceived by the market, what is the incentive to switch to something new? As a consumer, my guess would be that a video or 3D display would not create a huge spike in revenue. In fact, if done poorly I could even see it having the opposite effect. So what is the incentive to invest time and money into switching to something new and risky? ------- CGI models however seem to be a different story. The cost saving aspect is clear cut and I as the consumer likely won't even realize anything has changed.
- adwi 6y ago
  Those are good points, but fashion exists in a logic-adjacent (interesting, infuriating) intersection of Art and Commerce; on a big set you can almost map where someone is on that continuum by their order on the call sheet. On one hand, it makes total sense to ask if embracing 3D stuff, or pushing (to my mind) a more appropriate use of the digital mediums in which we create and experience most things will lead to spike in revenue: If you do it poorly (read: solution looking for a problem) I wouldn’t expect that to make much of a leap in any real metrics—and if companies are trying to pass off images on the wrong side of the uncanny valley that’d be more likely to hurt than help. But it’s the Art that actually sells the “lifestyle” (read: clothes), and if you can create a gobsmacking incredible experience that makes people feel things you will absolutely see that in metrics and earned media and attention... There are so many interesting technologies that are widely accessible today that fashion companies aren’t embracing because 1) they don’t know to look for them and 2) they don’t understand how they work. Small example: I absolutely blew a (publicaly-traded) client’s mind showing them a projection mapping concept... 2 years ago, well after the tools made it a 15 minute job they could have gotten the savvy intern to execute.

FearNotDaniel 6y ago

Nonsense. Maybe the generic low-end catalogue models will be replaced by some kind of AI but it definitely won't happen in high fashion. I've worked for some of these organisations and it's ALL about the in-person social aspects of the industry. Catwalk shows are an event with real people, not because it's the most effective way to showcase the physical items but because it creates a buzz that everyone wants to be a part of. The business thrives on parties and bars and muses and the backstage chaos, frantically pulling everything together at the last minute so they can glide out there and look serene for a few brief seconds. The designers and stylists and hair and makeup and accessories people love working with the girls - even the difficult diva types who turn up late and think they own the whole show - because it brings fun and spontaneity and joy and relationship building and uncertainty, the dangerous unpredictability, just on the threshold of losing control, is a big part of the energy and many people in the business have their entire 24/7 social life wrapped up completely in their careers. These techno "models" are a gimmick that will be used for as long as they grab headlines but in the long run, fashion people love people (each other, not necessarily their consumers) and - this may be hard for many IT types to comprehend - the business will always thrive on those people who are able to walk into a room and move around and pull faces that grab attention in surprising and unexpected ways, especially if those people are also enjoyable to work with in a way that some CGI never could be.

jeswin 6y ago
> this may be hard for many IT types to comprehend Save the condescension, this wasn't written by an 'IT type' or published on a tech journal. All industries that got disrupted by more modern technology came up with arguments similar to the ones you brought up - bookstores vs amazon, brick-and-mortar stores vs ecommerce, face-to face meetings vs video calls, film vs digital, newspapers vs internet. There will always be demand for high end fashion, but eventually it'll get relegated to a niche.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Yes. The "human factor" was supposed to have saved all those industries. Nope.

thewarrior 6y ago

I recently started brainstorming with my brother about what fields are actually likely to be disrupted by AI technologies that exist today and the list was quite surprising and unlike what I had seen in the media. The impact is likely to start in the creative industries. Entrepreneurs feel free to steal : 1. Hollywood in the Cloud : The progress of computer vision algorithms, game engines like Unreal and massive computation in the cloud mean that in 25 years time you maybe able to produce a Hollywood quality movie by writing code. Unreal engine will render the backgrounds, Deep neural nets will generate the actors voices and faces and code will be used to stitch everything together. This may also include the production of background scores by neural nets primed on music in similar scenes. The number of people needed to produce a film will be cut by 10x and we will see an explosion in film making. Tik Tok is an early example of this. 2. Digital Models: This is connected to the above. You will also see digital models being used on billboards and news readers will be replaced by models like GPT-3 that convert data into narratives and then they are read by digital newsreaders. They may even make it interactive by reading out the most popular tweets or having fake discussion between AI models with different personalities. 3.Lawyers : GPT-3 has given me a lot of confidence in predicting a major disruption to legal research. You can probably semi automate case research and you don't need armies of junior lawyers or para legals to fight cases. 4.Accountants: This relies on the continued improvement in computer vision in the ability to read and interpret printed invoices. More and more transactions will happen via APIs and be shepherded by digital accountants too. 5.Programmers: I am less sure of how programmers will be replaced but there are some obvious avenues. Natural language interfaces could make most front end work obsolete. You don't really need an Uber app if GPT-3 on steroids can understand exactly what you want and then produce a widget on the fly that shows you the appropriate information on demand. Most simple apps will be folded into natural language assistants which means that front end work will go down. What does exist will be designed with the assistance of AI tools. The backend work could also increasingly be subsumed into making a knowledge base that can learn and respond to intelligent queries. 6.Therapists: Smarter NLP models could act as digital therapists. People maybe more comfortable talking to a digital therapist and not be judged by an actual person. They can be given digital bodies and voices to make them more realistic. GPT-3 is way ahead of ELIZA and even in the original ELIZA studies people became quite attached to it. Technology is making people lonely and people may turn to technology to fix it. 7.Fake twitch streamers / Cam models: Synthesis algorithms could become so advanced that some people could become more attractive versions of themselves and create fake model personas that make a lot of money on websites like Twitch. Our economy and education system are probably unprepared for the scale of disruptions we may see.

acangiano 6y ago

Natural aging will impact you much faster than AI.

FiddlerClamp 6y ago

Presaged eerily in 1981 by Michael Crichton's terrible movie "Looker": https://youtu.be/2IZfSr891bE https://youtu.be/2IZfSr891bE (warning, nudity) Two additional scenes stand out: 1. The protagonist watches a prototype perfume commercial with eye-tracking glasses, and the computer ends up superimposing the closing logo over the part he watched the most often (this being 1981, I'm sure you can imagine...) 2. The implication that the computer can determine the 'perfect' poses and actions for optimal viewer response ("Not enough body twist according to the computer"), and the physical model having to contort herself to fit the ideal (you can see a few seconds of this at 0:39 in the trailer - https://youtu.be/yoT-r1slAZ4 https://youtu.be/yoT-r1slAZ4)

eplanit 6y ago

I was actually hoping that at the end, it would be revealed that the article was written by a bot.

Imnimo 6y ago

I think the biggest potential for AI in fashion will be to allow a customer to do "virtual try-on" - see a clothing item rendered on the customer's own body. Maybe eventually we'll reach a point where it's way cheaper to synthesize a photograph of a model wearing an item, but how expensive could those really be to make using a human being and a camera? But if you can synthesize a model wearing a shirt, it's not that big of a step to instead synthesize ME wearing that shirt. I can't easily get pictures of me wearing every shirt in the store the traditional way, so even an expensive, slow or flawed AI system to accomplish that would still have value.

elliekelly 6y ago
I suspect I would buy significantly fewer clothes online if I saw a picture of myself in them first. The model sells me on it because somewhere deep in my brain I think maybe those clothes will make me look like the model. As a customer, I would definitely be better off with an AI Selfie - I'd be happier with my purchases more often and maybe even get some sort of hidden psychological benefit to not looking at unrealistic model bodies. But I'm not sure retailers would stand to benefit much.

Townley 6y ago

I was skeptical, but while I was reading the article my wife looked over my shoulder at the photo on top of the article. Unprompted, she asked "Wow, she's absolutely gorgeous. Who is she?" We might be further along towards CGI models than I thought

Talanes 6y ago
The photo at the top of the article is the author, not the CGI model.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

Maybe that will help with the model scouting -> human trafficking pipeline.

hammock 6y ago

Modeling is an art form. In my opinion it's about as likely to be taken over by AI as any other art form. We have seen AI (or CGI) being used increasingly in film, music and writing, but the highest forms of these arts are not AI, unless they are AI for AI's sake (i.e. as a novelty). A fintech firm might now be producing daily stock summaries from AI. A Hollywood studio might make use of CGI in its movies. But the highest art form still makes without AI and will continue so for many decades to come.

dredmorbius 6y ago
The ... value ... in at least fine or collectable art (as opposed to mere mass entertainment) or other assets (wine, ancient artefacts, first editions and original manuscripts, etc.) lies largely, though not necessarily entirely, in uniqueness, particularly in status signalling value, as a Veblen good. Costs of production and provenance here are actually favourable characteristics and establish signalling capability. There is at least some likelihood that it's precisely the elements or aspects which are not automatable, or which are not automated, which will achive higher status.

ansible 6y ago

That article, and the related one about Miquela Sousa [1] now have me thinking in several directions. 1. How long before someone plugs in a GPT-3 backed chatbot to handle the comments for these virtual models? Eventually, AI powered voice synthesis, lip-sync and animation (helped by a kinematics model) will handle basic animation, to allow real-time chat with a "virtual model" who can walk and talk. This could be my big ticket to Internet fame and fortune! 2. And then someone will want to marry one, a la William Gibson's novel Idoru. It'll be a real fight when true AGIs are asking for equal rights. But how about before then when someone wants to extend rights to a fancy chatbot with an animation package that we know isn't sentient? Will forming a corporation help or hurt that effort? We do live in interesting times. [1] https://www.vogue.com/article/lilmiquela-miquela-sousa-instagram-it-girl-digital-simulation https://www.vogue.com/article/lilmiquela-miquela-sousa-insta...

karmakaze 6y ago
Why do we even need all that? My exposure to modelling is what I see them modelling, typically garments or accessories. There's no dialogue in spoken or written form. Software has getting/gotten extremely good at mimicry. Natural motion and facial expressions are in development. I really don't see these things as being that far off into the future where the human is just moving a mouse/hand to find the motion and expressions for a specific sequence. Video game avatars are the best indicator. If you go back 5, 10, 15 years and compare those to what we can do now then extrapolate 5-15 years.
- ansible 6y ago
  I was thinking in terms of the modern (2020) "influencer" lifestyle, and making an entire fake online persona, not just generating pictures.

wwarner 6y ago

I think the article is hyperbole. 120 years ago, photography changed painting and today AI is going to change photography. It might be, just as with modernist painting, that freely available perfection creates a desire for distilled humanity that can't (yet) be captured by AI. I think there is a fairly huge middle ground. I wish that REAL models would digitally represent themselves as 3D meshes, so that I could preview digital clothing on them. That would really sell clothes man.

jfernandez 6y ago

Wow, so many questions and thoughts this article raises in me. The biggest takeaway for me was that this technology will likely naturally evolve to seeing ourselves in the content and clothing we want. Maybe it's a bit narcissistic to declare publicly, but I have personally seen through my own work the march towards personalization: what's more personal than seeing yourself everywhere doing everything?

bayouborne 6y ago

"What if every time you shopped online you could see yourself in the clothes?" What if every time you shopped online you could see a version of yourself you'd indicated you want to be (via a thousand small web interactions) in those clothes?

namenotrequired 6y ago
Taking that idea a step further, what if every time I wrote a comment online I could see a version of my comment that the person I want to be would write?

MattGaiser 6y ago

I can see models being eliminated just because operating with them is politically dicey and fraught with ethical issues. So many stories of abuse and mistreatment and them eating tissue paper or being sexualized at 14 keep periodically occurring that eventually enough people will just say forget it and use digital creations.

munificent 6y ago
Conversely, I can see models not being eliminated. Because the people in power with money and choosing where to spend it would rather spend it on pretty women they can creep on than throwing it at a few nerds and a supercomputer.

felipemnoa 6y ago

I'm not sure I agree with this. Just like people still like to go to live concerts I think that people will still like real live models. And knowing that a real live model has a limited life span will make them way more interesting while in their prime. Besides, what makes a person quite interesting many times is not necessarily only how they look but how they live their lives. I do agree that AI models may/can become huge. But there will still be plenty of room for human ones. It almost feels that if AI models became prevalent the result would be to make some human models even more interesting. This is just a gut feeling of course.

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ickwabe 6y ago

I think many of these comnments are missing the broader implications for the fashion modeling world in general. Right now there are a lot of folks that are not models tied into this as well: photographers, lighting and set people, makeup, dressers, travel arrangers, fixers, etcs. I can easily see a near future with the equivalent of Unreal Engine for modling. All sets, lighting, makeup, AND people in picture will be life-like. There will be easily configurable random but realistic auto-posing, etc. The jobs will all become highly comodified down to low paying jobs for long hours much like the video game industry is today. And none of the afore mentioned jobs or attendent costs will be required. As for consumers wanting to "know" the real models and their lives and advantures? Ok well, I'll get off your lawn grandpa. If current trends contue, none of that will matter. Folks already form para-relationships with digital/fantasy people (re: go to any cosplay convention). So the models not being "real" will pose no barrier in the long run.

oh_sigh 6y ago

This is for the best. It seems especially damaging to the formation of a fully actualized human to derive your living merely on being born looking a certain way. Maybe I'm wrong, but is there any particular skill to being a model?

CyberDildonics 6y ago

Age will come for it sooner than 'AI'

jkaving 6y ago

As others have commented there are lots of costs and logistical complications involved in a traditional photo shoot. You need to have all the garments of the outfit, the model, the photographer and all support staff in the same place at the same time. Replacing this with all digital models and clothes would be a big cost reduction. However, it is still relatively hard to render photo-realistic faces and there's still a long way until all clothes are available as 3D models with realistic simulation of fabrics etc. But there are already solutions being used today that achieve some of the benefits without using completely generated content. Looklet[1] provides a system where each garment is shot individually on a mannequin. This is done by a couple of operators in a custom studio, typically placed in a warehouse or similar where samples are received. The images are then combined with other garment images and previously shot images of models to produce photo-realistic catalog images without the need for a traditional photo shoot. The web page has sample images and a list of retailers using this technology. Take a look at e.g. Saks Off 5th's[2] catalog and see if you can spot the images that have been produced in this way. [1] https://www.looklet.com https://www.looklet.com [2] https://www.saksoff5th.com/c/women/apparel https://www.saksoff5th.com/c/women/apparel

627467 6y ago

This reminds me of another article on IKEA's catalogue: at least 75% those photos are 3D renders[0] I can definitely see how a major fast-fashion brand can adopt this practice. Won't kill Paris and NYC fashion week, but certainly will decrease the number of models that are currently paid for more trivial modelling jobs. [0] https://kotaku.com/most-pics-in-ikea-catalogues-arent-photos-theyre-3d-re-1627713133 https://kotaku.com/most-pics-in-ikea-catalogues-arent-photos...

627467 6y ago
When I say Paris and NYC fashion week won't be kill I mean: the more artistic and high aspirational side of fashion will always be driven by humans (IMO) and humans will want to work with other humans. Not a fashion designer but I suspect it is hard for you to design clothes for a digital human to wear. I mean, if you're a game designer maybe you're moved by that. But not sure a fashion designer would.

renewiltord 6y ago

PlaceIt.net does this for lots of things. Love it.

vinniejames 6y ago

Influencers will take your job well before AI does.

YeGoblynQueenne 6y ago

>> The company uses generative adversarial networks (GANs), which is a type of machine learning, a subset of A.I. "Subfield" is more correct but it's interesting that a model (and that's not a language model) gets the relation between neural nets, machine learning and AI right, when the majority of the so-called tech press gets it consistenty wrong, e.g. using AI to refer to deep learning in a kind of reverse-synecdoche.

aaron695 6y ago

No. This childish extrapolation to the far future is cheap. Lets talk about something useful and hard like the first step. Will it be stock photography or voice actors? Is there an earlier step? Will it initially create a new industry as GAN humans become cheap? Then we can all smoke a doobie and discus whether future humans will masturbate to AI generated images or our brains and culture won't allow it.

Daub 6y ago

On a related subject, most of the images in an IKEA catalogue are now entirely digitally generated. One reason this is so is to allow for slightly different content to be delivered country to country (change of wall colour, different wall furniture etc). Some details here: https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/see-how-ikea-3d-models-the-rooms-in-their-catalogs/ https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/see-how-ikea-3d... What remains to be considered is human judgement. But it won't be long. There has been some research on automating the aesthetic placement of the camera within the scene... automatic composition. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9112197 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9112197 As a painter, I certainly know there are rules, albeit very 'floppy' ones.

web007 6y ago

The self-description of "Shudu Gram" as "world's first digital supermodel" ignores the history of Lara Croft's spread in The Face magazine (in Versace, amongst others), or the likes of Hatsune Miku and more Japanese idoru.

abeppu 6y ago

A side question: do people want digital models that look like real people? Shudu and her peers _look_ CGI, and I think that's deliberate. Compare the Shudu instagram with the output of a modern GAN. I think this is likely an intentional aesthetic choice. What if part of the appeal of a digital model is it can look both like and not like a person, in a way that is controllable and expressive? A separate question from the aesthetics is, could it be better to "objectify" something that's already an object, than to do that to a real person? https://www.instagram.com/p/BnGmYwzF6nR/ https://www.instagram.com/p/BnGmYwzF6nR/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

mesozoic 6y ago

Age will take her job but yeah AI will take away the job of model for the most part when not at in person events. An AI can't ever really replace the pheromone response at those I think.

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