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The technical component was the easy part compared to the existential complexities the avatar raises. Who has control over the way the character is used? Should the person’s voice also be captured? When a person becomes famous for how they pose and move for the camera, can that magic be recreated digitally? How is the model, and the team that built it, compensated? And, perhaps most intriguingly, what happens when the originating person dies? Does it enable a person’s estate to still earn revenue from their work, in the way that those of late musical artists do today?
Herzigová, and her team, are still navigating these considerations. “We are asking questions I don’t have an answer to, and it’s an uneasy subject, because it is weird to think that someone else will be in control of ‘you’, because it’s me but not me. I would imagine that eventually, I will — she will — kind of create her own persona,” she says. “Maybe if it lives within a [digital] universe with a persona, I can accept that and she can exist there.”
Unsigned CEO Gavin Myall is still establishing how to bring Herzigová’s avatar to market, including the pricing structure, as it opens up the ability to develop interesting partnerships that are a bit different than a traditional model’s work might entail. He is specifically interested in working with the BFC and emerging digital designers. He says that the agency will charge commission based on joint intellectual property between Herzigová, Unsigned and Dimension.
Consent and control are factors that the partnership with Herzigová gets in front of. A digital version of Marilyn Monroe, which portrayed the icon wearing contemporary pieces of Fendi and Miu, drew some criticisms for using her personhood without her participation. Similarly, film directors have used artificial intelligence to create digital narrations from celebrities who have died, including Anthony Bourdain and Andy Warhol. Photographer Nick Knight has also begun digitising models, and an avatar version of Kendall Jenner modelled in a Burberry ad campaign in 2020.
“It’s important that we have to make these decisions,” Myall says, “because that is one thing that annoys me about fashion. No one has these types of discussions with images, and models don’t own their rights, but the picture will go on forever. People can use it in 150 years’ time. We really think it is so refreshing that we have this conversation from the beginning.”
Some might argue that creating a fictional version of an existing person, with their explicit permission and parameters in place, is a safer approach to digital humans than, for example, creating entirely fictional models, as in the case of Shudu, or the range of models generated by Lalaland.ai for use in Levi’s’ e-commerce imagery. However, some brands, including Nars, LVMH and Coach, have intentionally created fictional personalities to inhabit ad campaigns and projects, because it can be more creative (and controllable) than hiring human personalities.
“It’s interesting to create another stream of what we do and challenge ourselves with talent representation in this new world,” Myall says. “We are all on this journey, and none of us know the answer.”
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
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