A photoshoot with no model. She’s not late though. She doesn’t exist.
Aitana is an AI model. Since she was created around a year ago she’s amassed a big following and is making thousands a month for her Barcelona-based agency. We intend to always try to make it as similar as what an influencer would do.
We take a picture with me in the image and we have to replace it with AI. So we have to play a little bit with lights and shadows to make it as real as possible. As well as the main images, Aitana’s designers make short videos to post as her Instagram Stories.
Back in the studio they plan the post. Maybe with Barcelona as the backgrounds is more interesting? And if we want we can do a simple prompt now put in Aitana and then complement all the prompt with more things like the clothes, the acting.
Clueless Agency won’t say exactly which AI image generator they are using but say they use a mixture of open source models like Stable Diffusion. Sometimes it can throw up some … surprises. And we train Aitana with… [Laughs] That’s interesting that you laughed at that one.
Aitana would never wear this for example. It’s funny because I would love her to wear this but she would not wear this. We spent like 2 months creating this personality and understanding how she would speak and how she would interact with her community.
So this is why we believe she has been working and she still works. Once the image is chosen - the refinements and corrections are done. They start with seeing what Photoshop’s inbuilt AI suggests then touch it up by hand.
Touch ups used to take a day but now it’s a few hours because the AI has improved so much. A few days later here’s the final product. I love this.
They’ve just giving us a printout of the very, very early days of Aitana's Instagram so she only had 3,800 followers and these are the early pictures and what's interesting is they haven't quite got the face perfect so Aitana's face just changes slightly. The studio says they can get thousands of pounds a month for sponsored posts and endorsements with Aitana. She is now the most famous of this new wave of realistic-looking AI models.
And there are plenty of them - some with hundreds of thousands of followers. Achieving realism in videos is proving harder but Aitana’s team is experimenting too. Aitana also now has an Only Fans style private membership for underwear and swim suit shots.
Aitana’s curated life is built for her mostly male fans - a key demographic for these AI models. Some find the message they are sending to boys and girls troubling. We’re seeing AI - artificial intelligence influencers and if you watch these it is terrifying how real they are.
Danae Mercer is a wellbeing influencer who calls out fakery on Instagram. I see huge issues with the rise of AI models and influencers. I think they're setting an unrealistic beauty standard that is close enough to being real that a lot of people who follow them don't realize they're not real especially teenagers, young teen girls, but then that perfection is so unachievable because it isn't real that it’s something like none of us can ever reach.
Aitana is marketed as a fitness-loving woman who lives a healthy lifestyle. She’s even been sponsored by nutrition and sports brands. “Is there a problem where your promoting a body image of someone that is you know in many ways perfect, but they don't exist they don't go to the gym.
They don't watch what they eat and there are some people, some of your followers. Let's say I wish I had that body? In the beginning we tried to make more curvy models for example or more not standardized models and clients didn't like that.
They usually want like a perfect model but you can see this everywhere in publicity. At the end of the day she's an influencer, but comparing her to the rest of the influencers - she looks the same as the rest. The agency has started creating more models with more diverse looks.
Including some men too. Although apparently marketers aren’t as interesting in male Ai models. Do you think we might ever be able to only use AI models?
I believe that we are here to stay and Ai technology is here to stay as well so in a way we have to combine and hold hands and see if we can do it together. The latest project is for a major car company. The brief is to design an AI model to be the face for an in-car AI voice Assistant.
A very 2024 assignment.
