Vogue Magazine has come under scrutiny after publishing an issue featuring AI generated models in an advert for fashion brand, Guess.

What does this mean for beauty standards and the future of publishing?

Newstalk's Tech Correspondent Jess Kelly said the move has brought about a sense of fear in multiple industries.

“There’s a few different aspects here,” she told Newstalk Breakfast.

“There’s the beauty standards point; we’ve been on this journey for quite a while with photoshopping, with filters and all the rest.

“Then there is the business side of this – modelling is a business, you’re putting people out of work by doing that.

“There’s also then the creative side of things, because if you think about it, if you’ve ever done a photoshoot, it’s not just the model that’s going there.

“There will be a photographer, there will be someone on the light; there’s a whole team and machine behind photoshoots, and I think this is worrying on a few fronts.”

AI generated model photoshoots featured in Vogue Magazine.

Jess explained that recent advancements in AI technology now allow people to control every aspect of generated photos.

“What you can do is you can feed in images; so if you’ve used anything like ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini or any of the platforms that are out there, you can feed in an image for it to work off,” she said.

“So, you can put in a jacket, and you can say, ‘Can you generate an image of a woman who’s 28, who’s a size eight, wearing this jacket’ - and it will do that.

“This has caused some very loyal Vogue subscribers to call for others, and indeed themselves, to cancel their accounts.”

'Rowing back' on inclusivity

Jess said that while the previous years had seen a positive shift in Vogue and the beauty industry in general towards more inclusivity, “that’s now rowing back".

“Also worth noting that AI is trained on existing norms,” she said.

“The majority of models are a certain way; so that is an issue.

“But it’s also that point of, we can’t just allow this to exist and to consume, and we the consumer do have the power to walk away from brands and vote with our pockets.”

Main image: jess kelly