Model says her face was edited with AI to look white: ‘It’s very dehumanizing’::Shereen Wu says leading designer uploaded altered picture, amid fears AI could ‘turn back the clock’ on progress in the industry

  • phx@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Honestly, I doubt this was even AI. I know it’s he buzzword of the month but it’s just as easy for some asshole to do with Photoshop

      • phx@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        That was my thought on it as well. AI actually does a pretty good job of these things, but the face in this picture actually feels like a poor cut/paste job and doesn’t match the lighting etc

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Possible but usually they just touch up someone’s face. This is a completely different face.

  • RocketBoots@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    I feel bad for the pressure she must feel. She’s absolutely beautiful, and it’s almost like some weird dude had body dismorphia on her behalf. The edited photograph looks like a fucking cross eyed sex doll. There’s no way this is AI. This was some chud with a pirated copy of Adobe Photoshop.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, insulting edited photos aren’t anything new. If anything, AI will make them higher quality than the average human troll would.

  • PotjiePig@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Strike 1: upload an AI racist post changing a person’s ethnicity

    Strike 2: not even paying her for her work, and taking her only ‘income’ away which is exposure. (Silly of people that work for exposure but that’s another topic.

    Strike 3: apologize in the form of a thinly veiled threat of legal action

    Strike 4: feign ignorance, by saying you did it because you were overwhelmingly popular on social media, and weren’t paying attention and had no idea you didn’t pay your models. (Don’t lie, you absolutely knew). Pass the blame further by blaming the fans, because apparently someone else had a vested interest in changing the race of one of his models.

    Strike 5: try and turn the narrative by making sure everyone knows that the event is in honour of his dead wife, and actually WE should feel sorry for HIM.

    Sounds an awful lot like narcissism (what’s the narcissists poem?)

    This guy seems to be a bit of a racist scumbag, who not only takes advantage of young models, but is happy to throw those around him under the bus or throwing his lawyers at the problem before dishing out an honest and humble apology.

  • GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org
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    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. “I didn’t think before resharing it on my Instagram Stories as I was on an emotional rollercoaster, resharing all that I was tagged in,”

    In his now deleted Instagram post, Costello said that “in light of the false allegations presented in [Wu’s] videos”, his eponymous brand is “moving forward with legal proceedings”.

    I’m not sure he understands what it means to take responsibility.

  • bloopernova@programming.dev
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    1 year ago

    Sigh. Why are so many people such utter shitstains? And no one at any point thought to say “waitaminute, this might be the wrong thing to do”?

  • meco03211@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Former republican governor for Louisiana Bobby Jindal commented on the issue saying “I could get AI to do this for me? Awesome.”

    • query@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Should be illegal. Same as unpaid internships. Pay workers or don’t be a business.

  • TimewornTraveler@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    side note, fashion is fucking dumb. her outfit is stupid and she should feel bad for wearing it. he should feel bad for making it. we should feel bad for looking at it

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    In a TikTok about the incident that has been viewed 1.8m times in the last week, Shereen Wu says Michael Costello, a designer who has worked with Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, and Celine Dion, posted a photo to his Instagram from a recent Los Angeles fashion show.

    In a statement posted to Instagram on Thursday and deleted less than 24 hours later, 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.

    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.

    “The modified image of Shereen spotlights the possibility that an AI program that has absorbed mainstream beauty preferences may erase the race of a model altogether, turning back the clock on the fashion industry’s progress toward diversity on the runway,” Scafidi said.

    As the Cut reported, Costello added to the pile-on, sharing screenshots via Instagram of a supposed DM conversation with Teigen that left him “traumatized, depressed” with “thoughts of suicide”.

    After Costello’s threat of legal action over her viral Tiktok, Wu contacted the Model Alliance, an advocacy group for fashion workers, which referred her to a lawyer.


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