Last week the Clapham-based lifestyle website SheerLuxe made great fanfare in announcing its new fashion editor, Reem. New roles on this beat are rare. In truth, fashion editors are an endangered and rapidly dwindling species; there are but a handful of us left in London. If you want a job, you’re basically waiting for someone to either die or have a baby, so a fresh comrade always piques interest. Reem came with a prominent announcement on an industry directory, flashy Instagram post and dedicated introductory interview feature. Wow, Reem must be really special, I thought; weird I’ve never heard of her.
Oh wait, sad plot twist. In spite of the sexy snaps of the inside of her handbag, “go-to” lunch salad and shiny new headshot, Reem is actually a “new AI enhanced team member”, “powered by SheerLuxe”. Well! Was the SheerLuxe community thrilled by this new staff-bot, ready to dispense all manner of fashion and beauty advice? Encouragingly for us IRL fashion editors, no. The brand was so harassed on its social media channel that the next day the entire office took a “duvet day” to “unwind, switch off and maybe stay in bed”, before presumably spending that time coming up with the heartfelt apology issued over three slides in its next Instagram post.
Make-believe personnel are presumably a lot easier to manage, fire and refuse pay rises to
You can sympathise with the plucky HR director for whom make-believe personnel are presumably a lot easier to manage, fire and refuse pay rises to. Virtual women won’t complain about awkward things like the gender pay gap and diversity hires; there’s no need to shell out for maternity leave or make her feel a failure for leaving at 5pm to pick up her child from school. Reem won’t do anything careless like endangering the quality of her OOTD (outfit of the day!) looks by getting fat, having spots or a weird hair-day; she’s not going to kick up a fuss about her seat, hotel location or expenses at Fashion Week because — lol! — she won’t be there. You can see how it might appear to be win-win, never mind the Cyranos feeding her lines.
Although, if I’m to be picky, it does seem spectacularly dull that even with the ability to create any kind of woman, Reem is an impersonation of mystifying blandness. She’s young, pretty, but not threateningly so, she’s slim (because why would you make a pretend-person chubby?) has perfectly blow-dried glossy hair and slathered on “no-make-up” make-up. She speaks in brand names, products and trending restaurants, spewing mind-numbingly banal sentences such as: “Despite my love of maximalist designers, I think it’s really worth investing in some of the heritage brands that have a legacy of beautiful craftmanship.”She has a skincare routine (“I swear by retinol”) and recommendation for injectables, because what kind of fake woman wouldn’t be hammering home manufactured impossible beauty standards? Never has so-called intelligence felt quite so artificial.
Reem herself is the brainchild (we are told) of a Middle Eastern “AI imagery creator”. To be fair to her Frankenstein-overlords, virtual influencers are nothing new. In the gaming world, they are a booming spin-off industry. As long as users buy into their so-called authenticity, no one seems to mind.The LA studio concoction Lil Miquela has 2.5 million followers on Instagram and has “worked” with Prada, Dior and Calvin Klein. They are a marketeer’s dream in that they are entirely malleable. No tantrums or insane demands, no uncomfortable political outbursts or allegiances, no growing older.
Virtual influencers are a marketeer’s dream. No tantrums or insane demands, no uncomfortable political outbursts or allegiances, no growing older
Over the weekend Adidas was forced to apologise for, and retract its SL72 trainer campaign featuring Bella Hadid, the outspoken half-Palestinian model, after Israel and Jewish groups objected. The trainer is a re-issue of a shoe from the 1972 Munich Olympic games where, albeit unrelatedly, 11 Israeli athletes were kidnapped and killed by the Palestinian terror group Black September. There are rumours that Hadid is considering taking legal action against the German sports giant. One can imagine after the short-sighted self-inflicted furore that the brand wishes it had taken a more illusionary route with its casting.
Perhaps SheerLuxe is simply ahead of its time, and its audience not yet ready for the delights of Reem’s favourite minibreak spots (“I’m loving Scotland right now”). Or, perhaps, there might be some valuable human skill involved in guffing on about clothes, ahem. In the words of Marty McFly, “your kids are going to love it.” Shudder, etc.
