Shudu Gram is a striking South African model. Shes what fashion likes to call one to watch, with a Balmain campaign in 2018, a feature in Vogue Australia on changing the face of fashion, and a red carpet appearance at the 2019 BAFTAs in a custom Swarovski gown.

Im also a model. Im from Canada, although I live in New York City now. Unlike Shudu, whos considered a new face, Ive been in the business for almost five years. I am also a futurist; I spend a lot of time researching emerging technologies and educating young people about the future of work through my startup WAYE. Also unlike Shudu, Im a real model, and by that I mean Im a real person. Shudus not. Shes a 3D digital construction.

Digital models and influencers are successfully breaking into the fashion industry from every angle. Some have even been signed to traditional modeling agencies. Take Miquela Sousa, a 19-year-old Brazilian American model, influencer, and now musician, who has amassed a loyal following of more than 2 million people on Instagram. Shes collaborated with Prada and Givenchy, has been featured in a Calvin Klein video with Bella Hadid, and she just released a song with singer-songwriter Teyana Taylor this past spring.

Impressive stuff, but theres one thing thats keeping real-life me at ease: Miquela, like Shudu, is a computer-generated image (CGI), not artificial intelligence (A.I.). That means that Miquela and Shudu cant actually do anything on their own. They cant think or learn or offer posing variations independently. But that wont be the case for much longer.

DataGrid is a Japanese tech outfit whose A.I. algorithms directly threaten my job. The company uses generative adversarial networks (GANs), which is a type of machine learning, a subset of A.I. Ill spare you the specifics of the algorithmic details, but in summary, these digital models can offer a vast array of posing options that mimic exactly what we do in e-commerce and commercial modeling. For models like myself, thats how we make most of our money. The German e-commerce giant, Zalando (for which I have modeled almost a dozen times), has published research papers on this technology. It would seem to be only a matter of time until fashion giants jump on board.

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I Am a Model and I Know That Artificial Intelligence Will Eventually Take My Job - Vogue.com