Shereen Wu says leading designer uploaded altered picture, amid fears AI could ‘turn back the clock’ on progress in the industry

  • magnetosphere@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    From the title by itself, I was expecting a simple change to skin tone, which would have been bad enough. Reading the story and looking at the pic made me realize that things are much, much worse. What the FUCK.

    • OrgunDonor@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      You know what is the worst thing about this for me.

      According to his post, he did not produce the show and did not know that Wu was not compensated for her time until he saw her TikTok.

      Not only did they cheat her out of being the model, and replacing her with a terrible AI photo. They also didnt pay her for doing the actual show, until this blew up and the designer saw the tiktok.

      • CoderKat@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        He also initially threatened legal action against her, for unclear reasons. Like, he's shared some racist Photoshop, gets called out for it, and his first response is to… Threaten to sue the model who simply made public comments about it?

        Guy is a real piece of shit. He can walk back on stuff all he wants, but the first thing he did speaks volumes about what kinda person he is.

      • drislands@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        This isn't saying she got paid after the TikTok – it's saying the guy didn't know she wasn't paid, until he saw the TikTok. AFAIK she hasn't been paid at all.

        • OrgunDonor@lemmy.world
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          According to his post, he did not produce the show and did not know that Wu was not compensated for her time until he saw her TikTok. “After finding out through her videos that she wasn’t paid, I offered Shereen compensation for her time and talents,” Costello wrote.

          It sounds like he at least offered to pay her, despite not being the one that was running the show and paying her.

      • Confused_Emus@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        To be fair, Wu also states in the article that she wasn’t expecting to be paid in anything but “exposure.” But that i think is what makes this particularly egregious - she wasn’t even getting paid in that fake currency for the naive. Although the article says that many of the models are under a similar arrangement for the fashion week this occurred during, so maybe exposure still counts for something in the fashion and modeling industries.

    • BabyWah@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Same. They literally changed her Asian features into that? And it's not like the changed face is prettier than her. Disgusting.

      • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Supermodels are why I don't really buy the whole "the media decides what's attractive", because it's been trying to say that that's the peak of attractiveness all my life but I've never bought it.

        • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You aren't wrong. High end women models and women porn stars look vastly different. One looks like a 19 year skinny boys the other look like women.

          I think when people say that they mean that girls with confidence issues see these runway models and think that is what it means to be attractive, not that suddenly men will be attracted to that.

            • czech@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Costello denied altering the photo and said the image was “fan art” sent to him by an unspecified source,

              (Costello did not respond to a request for comment.)

              Yes, it sounds like bullshit. Did you read the article?

  • Hubi@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I hate how much the AI term gets thrown around. This just looks like regular Photoshop.

    • trash80@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      I agree. The article even says they don't know how the picture was edited or who edited it. It may not have anything to do with AI at all.

      While the origin of the altered runway photo is unknown, Wu believes someone – she doesn’t know who – used AI to create the white face that covered hers, a theory Costello echoed in his Instagram post.

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I knew someone who was a photographer in it and drunk one night she confessed how so many of those photos are fake. Just props and settings. The real model headshot just got moved around.

  • TheWoozy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If I hadn't read the headline, and just looked at the pictures, my first reaction wouldn't that they changed they changed her race, but that they faked a ton of makeup, added highlights, and "enhanced" the outfit's shoulders.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    She should be objecting to all the edits, not just the eye shape and overly filtered skin tones. Why did they need to edit her nose, or make that one giant dumbo ear? how could anyone think this mess is an improvent on the model’s great looks?

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The high fashion industry has always been a corrupt garbage fire.

    Go right now to some normal store's website and check out the clothing section. You are going to see normal looking people smiling. Why shouldn't they be smiling? They have a nice sweater on.

    High fashion it is all about taking these very unusual looking people, having them drain their face of touch of humanity, selling clothing that fits no one and costs thousands of dollars. And it is all performative. A game the super rich and their lackies are playing against other super rich and their lackies. If you had two investments available to you today the first is some "tech" company with an idea for a social media site and the other is a fashion maker the tech company (with it's 5% chance of success) has a higher chance of success.

    Lay down with dogs, get up with flies. This whitewashing is disgusting but not shocking especially given the decades of photo editing these shitstains have done.

    • stella@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Yes, I have no sympathy for the people who subject themselves to this abuse.

  • AgentGrimstone@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was expecting something like what they did to Mindy Kaling where they lightened her skin (way too much) but they didn't make her look white, they straight up replaced her head.

  • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I'd be pissed too. They didn't just change her skin tone, they completely took her out of the photo. For models who are sometimes paid in exposure, this is like yanking that pay away from her. Whatever photoshop is done, she needs to at least look like it's her for her to be able to get the benefits from doing the work.

    But even models who are paid money, there should be laws against making them look like someone completely different, in terms of the brand that they work for.

    And that designer is a pos for sharing that photo, even if a fan did send it to him as "fan art". Beyond the face change being in bad taste, he's a professional, so he should be promoting the actual model who walked for him.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    He also said he was receiving death threats and that the show was a tribute to his aunt, who recently passed away.

    Was his aunt a racist and that's why he made an Asian model white?

    • wahming@monyet.cc
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      1 year ago

      Read the article, it wasn't the designer who made the change. Even the model said so

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I read the article and that is not what she said:

        While the origin of the altered runway photo is unknown, Wu believes someone – she doesn’t know who – used AI to create the white face that covered hers, a theory Costello echoed in his Instagram post.

        If you think the designer had no input into the photos from their own show, either you're nuts or they don't care very much about their designs.

        • wahming@monyet.cc
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          1 year ago

          Costello denied altering the photo and said the image was “fan art” sent to him by an unspecified source, but he “took responsibility” for sharing it

          More context