A fashion faux pas?
Valentino is being slammed after unveiling an advertisement featuring Artificial Intelligence, with trendsetters trashing the release as “cheap” and “tacky.”
The Italian luxury couture company collaborated with various artists on works to promote their new DeVain handbag.
One mind-bending video, created by a “multi-disciplinary artist” known as Total Emotional Awareness, shows a “surreal encounter” between models who appear to climb out of the designer handbag.
In a later part of the clip, the iconic Valentino logo transforms into human arms.
While the brand may have been hoping to be edgy and innovative, fashionistas were fuming.
“Call me a hater, but this feels cheap and not on brand,” one person snarked.
“AI does not match luxury and craftmanship,” another hater chimed in.
“Didn’t think the AI slop on my feed would be coming from Valentino,” a third follower fumed.
Others described it as a “cheap, tacky AI mess, while another couture connoisseur opined: “Advertising campaigns are an opportunity to put talented creatives centre stage. AI in this instance is lazy at best.”
The negative response to the ad from Valentino suggests that people still see AI content as “less valuable” than content created by humans, Dr. Rebecca Swift, senior vice president of creative at Getty Images, told the BBC.
“While people are excited by AI-generated content for personal use, they hold brands to a higher standard, especially expensive brands,” she explained. “Even full transparency about AI use wasn’t enough to win them over.”
Anne-Liese Prem, head of cultural insights & trends at creative digital agency Loop, added that the issue isn’t necessarily the use of AI itself, but rather “the perception of what the technology replaces.”
“When AI enters the visual identity of a brand, people worry that the brand is choosing efficiency over artistry,” she told the BBC. “Even if the execution is creative, audiences often read it as cost-saving disguised as innovation.”
Prem said that Valentino had “the right instinct” to be straightforward about using AI, but the response to it revealed “a deeper cultural tension.”
“Without a strong emotional idea behind it, generative AI can make luxury feel less human at a moment when people want human presence more than ever,” she said.
