Artificial Intelligence: Job Stealer or Creative Genius?
Christelle Al Abbasi discusses the thin line between AI acting as a disruptor for the fashion industry and a supporter of it.
Artificial intelligence has moved from the margins to the call sheet. What began as software to tidy edges and correct lighting now sits inside the creative process, generating models that do not tire or age and can be shaped exactly to a brief before the lights go up. Audiences are learning, often without noticing, to accept non-human images as part of fashion.
The shift became clear when American Vogue’s August 2025 issue featured a Guess campaign fronted by a digital model. Her image, indistinguishable from a conventional photograph, was entirely synthetic. Only the small print revealed what the eye could not: she was generated, not shot. For an industry built on illusion, the step felt seamless, and that makes it all the more significant.
AI now supports almost every stage of production. Brands can design, style and shoot entire campaigns without travel, fittings or crews, reducing cost and carbon output. According to Vogue Business, AI image generation can reduce campaign timelines by up to 80 per cent, squeezing budgets for human crews. Styling, photography and make-up work is being compressed or automated, while demand rises for data analysts, prompt engineers and digital production leads. The labour market is splitting between those who can direct the tools and those replaced by them. The question is not whether jobs go, but which creative skills retain value as automation becomes standard.
The response must begin with transparency. If a model is synthetic, say so. If a face is composited, explain how and why. Provenance should be treated as part of creative credit, and consent as part of the process. The Model Alliance and other advocacy groups are calling for likeness-rights legislation to protect workers as AI imagery proliferates, while publications such as Vogue Italia and Dazed have begun labelling synthetic content as standard practice. Authenticity, once bound to perfection, is becoming a matter of honesty. Artificial intelligence will not erase fashion’s imagination, but it will test it. The industry’s future depends on whether these tools are used to widen the frame or narrow it. Efficiency may define this decade, but artistry will decide what endures. The most modern image is not the smoothest; it is the one that still makes room for life.
If fashion keeps that balance, AI reads less as an existential threat and more as a capable assistant: quick, consistent, occasionally brilliant, but never a replacement for judgement. This industry has always balanced fantasy with reality; the cut must flatter a moving body; the story must land with a living reader. That will not change. What will change is the route to the image, the skills on set, and the expectation that credits include both people and processes.
Words by Christelle Al Abbasi