Aitana López seems to have come out of nowhere and taken the modeling industry by storm.
The pink-haired, muscular 25-year-old from Barcelona has reportedly landed advertising deals worth more than $1,000 per Instagram post, and has more than 100,000 online followers.
Her Instagram feed shows her posing in outfits from Guess, Brandy Melville and Victoria’s Secret, tagging hair care brand Olaplex to credit them for her vibrant locks.
There’s just one problem: her hair isn’t real. In fact, Aitana López was created with the help of artificial intelligence.
This post on Aitana López’s Instagram page has more than 10,000 likes. The caption, translated from Spanish, reads: ‘Whatever the occasion, the ‘little black dress’ never fails! This photo is not from today, but I wanted to share it with you. What do you think?’ Several companies have been tagged in the post
She is the creation of The Clueless, a “modeling agency” that does not appear to use real human models.
According to Clueless founder Rubén Cruz, the agency created Aitana as a way to overcome the obstacle of human talent.
“We started analyzing how we were working and realized that many projects were being suspended or canceled due to issues beyond our control.
“A lot of times it was the fault of the influencer or the model and not because of any design issues,” Cruz said Euro news.
That’s why Cruz and his team created Aitana, an AI-based model that doesn’t eat or sleep, requires no healthcare, and has no retirement fund.
Companies know they are paying for a virtual influencer when they book Aitana.
Cruz and Clueless even said this is part of the appeal, as brands can save time and money by hiring her instead of an actual human model.
Instead of a photo shoot, all she needs is a few people behind a computer playing with a generative AI program and Photoshop.
This post on Aitana’s Instagram account @fit_aitana received more than 16,000 likes in three days. Clothing brand Victoria’s Secret and hair care brand Olaplex are tagged in the photo
“We did it so we could live a better life and not have to rely on other people who have egos, who have manias or who just want to make a lot of money by posing,” Cruz said.
Add “posing” to the list of industries where business owners don’t want regular people to make money — a list that has included such diverse jobs as warehouse workers and rocket manufacturers.
Service sector jobs are already under threat from AI, as some experts have predicted that millions of fast food workers could be pushed out of their roles by 2028.
According to an estimate from earlier this year, up to 80 percent of relatively softer desk jobs, such as accountants and PR specialists, are also at risk.
But it is not only blue-collar jobs and jobs in the knowledge economy that do this threatened by automationnow.
Aitana is just one example of a growing trend of AI models and influencers, who have been called a ‘terrifying glimpse into the future‘, a future where creative and human-centric jobs will be handed over to AI, while humans will have to perform heavier labor.
And that’s not just an imagined future.
Major clothing brands such as Levi’s announced plans earlier this year to ‘supplement’ their cast of human fashion models with AI models.
Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein have also joined the ranks of virtual employers.
Clothing brand Brandy Melville was tagged in this post on Aitana’s Instagram. This also applies to Olaplex, even though she has no hair
Levi’s received strong backlash when the company declared it would use AI-generated models to increase their diversity “in terms of size and body type, age and skin color.”
This caused observers to wonder why the company wouldn’t just hire real models from different ethnicities and pay them fairly.
‘Very efficient, Levi’s! Laziness, cheapness and cynicism in one fell swoop said film director Peter Ramsey earlier this year when Levi’s made the announcement.
It’s too early to tell whether AI models are taking jobs away from real people, but based on the growing number of companies entering this field, they only seem to be becoming more numerous – and more affordable.
A lingerie brand and hair care brand have been tagged in this post on Aitana’s Instagram page. Brands pay approximately $1,000 per post for AI model approval
Compared to virtual influencers who can easily charge tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per post, even some of the biggest names with millions of followers are a bargain.
For example, Lil Miquela was one of the first virtual influencers and is still extremely popular with 2.7 million followers on Instagram.
But while a real person with that kind of following can make a quarter of a million dollars for an ad campaign, a post from Lil Miquela reportedly costs about $10,000.
However, they have not been universally adopted.
There is criticism of AI models undermine humanity from the fashion industry.
Clueless noticed this fact and wanted to make something more than just a pretty face with Aitana López, Cruz claimed.
They had to make her an internet personality. An influencer.
‘In the first month we realized that people follow lives, not images. Since she is no longer alive, we had to give her a piece of reality so that people could identify with her in some way. We had to tell a story,” Cruz said.
To that end, they’ve made Aitana a bit of a gamer and a bit of a fitness junkie, in addition to her general good looks.
As AI seems to infiltrate every sector, it remains to be seen whether lawmakers will include AI-generated models in future regulations.