European fashion brand Mango has unveiled an AI-generated picture campaign for its limited edition Sunset Dream collection of its youth line.
According to a press release, the campaign resulted from a collaboration between “Mango Teen’s design, art and styling, dataset and AI model training, and its photography studio, among others.”
The process began with a photographer shooting “real photos” of the garments from the collection. The real images were then fed into a generative AI model which had been trained on how to position the real garments correctly.
Mango says that the biggest challenge was achieving images that have the same editorial quality as a standard fashion campaign with real models. The images were “retouched, edited, and mastered” by the internal photography studio.
“This initiative reflects our continued commitment to innovation and being on the cutting edge in the fashion world,” says Jordi Alex, Chief Information Technology Officer at Mango.
“Artificial intelligence is a technological revolution that presents great opportunities that should act as a co-pilot to extend the capabilities of our employees and further amplify our creativity. Because technology will either make us more human or it won’t.”
What is striking about the few images released by Mango is just how realistic they are. The AI images look like real photos shot in the Medina of Marrakech, Morocco; there is almost nothing that gives them away as synthetic. Viewers could easily glance at the image and not know that it is AI-generated.
“Any brand producing advertising campaigns that are AI-generated, and I start to question that brand’s authenticity, integrity and above all — honesty,” says Iain Philpott on X (formerly Twitter). “It’s just ‘fake news’. Where does this end?”
Mango says it is committed to innovation and says this is the first fashion campaign generated entirely by artificial intelligence. The company, based in Barcelona, says it has “more than fifteen different platforms that apply artificial intelligence at different points in its value chain, such as pricing and personalization.”
Mango says it already uses an AI image generator to help design garments and seek inspiration not just for clothes — but for its window dressing, architecture, and interior design.
Image credits: Mango.