For years, the modelling industry has been challenged to broaden representation and move away from rigid, often unattainable ideals of beauty. There has been real progress, and offering diversity in talent options is now an expectation.
Really, the industry has moved with its clients. Some agencies would lay claim to having been pioneers, dragging the industry into a new, fairer, more diverse world – something we’ve always striven to encourage. The truth may be that the industry has just been adapting to a shift in attitudes, keeping pace with the zeitgeist. We are at a place now where it would be commercially irrational not to embrace diversity and individuality. Many briefs now would be impossible for an agency to fill without a real range of gender, ethnicity, age, ability, skin-types, models, actors, ‘real people’ on its books.
Either way, AI risks quietly undoing much of this progress.
We’ve all seen AI-generated models that hark back to the narrow, one-dimensional beauty standards we were just beginning to leave behind us. And it’s easy to see how their use might be attractive to some brands. But we risk amplifying a version of beauty that is even less attainable than before; particularly for young women and men who are already struggling to navigate identity and self-image in a highly visual world.
Social media has already blurred the lines between what is real and what is enhanced, both in terms of what is posted and the endless filters and editing applied. Young people, already comparing themselves with images that were filtered, are now up against images that are entirely fabricated. Not only does this present people with impossible comparisons, it also makes individuality seem like a flaw rather than a strength.
At Ditto Models we are, of course, concerned about protecting real talent (as well as real humans more generally). AI can endlessly generate flawless faces. But flawless is forgettable. What people connect with is character. And character only comes from real talent. There is power in the connection and uniqueness that you get from working with real talent. And with all the fear around what AI will take from the industry, it is this that will prevail.
In the image above: Rianna, Meg and Jen, showing what real talent can do, from our first portfolio update day at our new Bristol studio.