When H&M announced they were launching AI-generated digital twins of 30 real models, the internet reacted the way it always does: with excitement, fear, applause, outrage—and confusion. Some hailed it as the future of inclusive fashion. Others saw it as another nail in the creative industry’s coffin.

But here’s a more uncomfortable thought:
What if digital twins aren’t the enemy? What if they’re just a mirror—reflecting how transactional, disposable, and hyper-efficient we’ve already become?

The Efficiency Trap

Let’s be clear: this move isn’t about diversity, representation, or creativity. It’s about control.
With digital twins, H&M doesn’t need to wait on a photographer’s schedule, pay for makeup artists, or accommodate the creative direction of anyone outside the algorithm. They own the pixels. The poses. The performance.

It’s not about replacing people.
It’s about owning them—forever.

We’ve Been Here Before

Remember when stock photography disrupted ad agencies?
When influencers disrupted celebrity endorsements?
When AI writers started ghostwriting LinkedIn thought leadership posts?

We laughed. We adapted. We moved on.
But with each disruption, one thing quietly disappeared: friction.

And friction is where the magic used to live.

The messy, unpredictable, human stuff—eye contact between a model and a photographer, an improvisational gesture, a happy accident—these are the things that used to make a brand campaign breathe. Now? The air is synthetic. Clean. Perfectly optimized. And a little bit dead.

What We Lose When We “Win”

We’re entering an era where beauty, emotion, and even “relatability” can be algorithmically rendered on demand.
But ask yourself:

• Will the audience feel anything?
• Will a pixel-perfect model with flawless symmetry ever replace the electric tension of a real person caught between poses?
• What kind of stories will we be telling when all our characters are engineered to test well?

The issue isn’t the tech—it’s the taste.
We aren’t replacing humans with AI.
We’re replacing risk with control.

The Real Question

If brands start replacing real creativity with simulations of it, we should stop asking what AI can do, and start asking why we’re letting it do it.

Because in the end, the digital twin isn’t the threat. ( Here is a previous article of mine )

It’s the ghost of a creative industry that chose efficiency over soul.

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