Spanish fashion brand Mango has launched a new campaign with an AI model featuring their teen designs. This is the first campaign of its type.
Mango’s Chief Information Technology Officer, Jordi Alex, said “This initiative reflects our continued commitment to innovation and being on the cutting edge in the fashion world.”
In a statement, Mango declared that AI is a technological revolution that has brought great opportunities and amplified human creativity.
Various teams inside Mango developed the viral AI model campaign
Mango’s teen design, art, styling, dataset, and AI model training, worked in collaboration with various photography studios to create the campaign.
At first, Mango shot pictures with real photos of each piece in the collection. Then, the company trained a generative AI model to generate images by dressing the AI-generated model in the items of clothing.
According to the company, the biggest challenge they faced during this process was creating AI images with editorial quality comparable to that of an “organic” fashion campaign.
Mango struggled with maintaining the characteristics of the clothing pieces and the AI-generated model. This technique proves to be challenging to designers who have to mix both AI and real pictures together.
Subsequently, the art team at Mango edited, retouched, and mastered the images in the photography studio.
Mango has always been committed to innovation
Innovation has “always been a key pillar of the strategy” for Mango, allowing the company to become one of the leading fashion conglomerates in Europe.
The company has developed more than 15 platforms that apply AI at different points of production. Some of these include AI applications, such as pricing and customer personalization, in Mango’s value chain.
However, the most notable technology developed by the Mango fashion conglomerate is the internal conversational generative AI.
Additionally, Mango has used its image-generative AI technology to help the company’s designers gain inspiration in creating prints and fabrics.
It has also joined the popular online video game “Roblox,” connecting with more than 70 million daily active users. Mango opened its first virtual store in January 2024. Users can buy Mango products for their characters there.
Mango’s AI model has raised ethical concerns
The use of AI has been heavily scrutinized by many productive sectors all around the world. However, none have been more vocal in their opposition than artists and those who are heavily involved with creative jobs.
This was evident by 2023’s SAG-Aftra protests in which Hollywood writers demanded better conditions. They were adamant about not allowing AI to come into creative projects because that would put them out of work.
However, corporations and studios, such as Mango and Disney, are pushing for a mix of both human creative talents and AI technology, which could potentially enhance creative production.
