Can Fast AI Imagery and Authenticity Exist in the Same Sentence?

There’s a quiet test happening across luxury and beauty marketing at the moment.

Most brands don’t know they’re taking it. A lot of them are already failing it.

The test isn’t really about whether you’re using AI...almost everyone is at this point, even if they’re not exactly shouting it from the rooftops. The real question is whether your audience can feel the difference between AI used as a creative tool and AI used as a way to cut the photography budget in half.

Turns out, they can. Even when they can’t explain why.

The research is not on your side (if you’re cutting corners)

A study published in the Journal of Advertising Research in 2025 found that when consumers knew a luxury brand had used AI generated imagery, they rated the brand as less authentic, less premium, and less desirable. Not by a tiny bit either.

And the effect was noticeably worse for luxury than for everyday brands.

Which makes sense when you think about it. Luxury isn’t really selling you a product. It’s selling you the idea that someone cared enough to make something properly. The moment AI enters the picture without any real intention behind it, that promise quietly falls apart.

The brands doing it well all figured out the same thing

They made AI work harder, not easier. There’s a difference.

Burberry has been using AI to extend shoots... generating extra assets that sit alongside real campaign photography ...and experimenting with imagery that pulls from its own archive. It feels considered. Like a creative decision was made somewhere, by a human, on purpose.

Louis Vuitton is reportedly doing something similar ...using AI for supplementary digital content, social variants, regional adaptations... while the core campaign photography still involves actual humans in actual places.

The most interesting one is Fiorucci, which leaned into the surreal completely. Its Love Boots campaign used AI to reimagine the brand’s iconic imagery in ways that were deliberately, unmistakably artificial ...strange, dreamlike, a bit odd in a good way. It worked because it wasn’t trying to pass as real. The AI aesthetic was the point. And you needed genuine creative thinking to pull it off.

That’s the pattern. When AI demands more creativity from you, it tends to go well.

The brands struggling are making a simpler calculation: fewer photoshoots, same results

Spoiler: it’s not the same results.

Valentino released an AI generated campaign that got publicly described as “cheap” and “tacky.” For a luxury house, those are basically the two worst words in the English language. The imagery wasn’t technically bad. The strategy was.

J.Crew tried something subtler... using AI to recreate the nostalgic feel of its old catalogues. That very specific warmth of worn in denim and easy weekends. Without mentioning it was AI. People felt something was off before anyone could put their finger on it. When it came out, the fact that it had been hidden made everything worse.

Gucci went fully AI generated for its Fall/Winter 2025 campaign. Technically impressive. Creatively coherent. But the reception was uneasy. For a brand built on Italian craftsmanship, the question people kept coming back to wasn’t “is this beautiful?” It was “do we trust it?”

Meanwhile, in beauty, some brands have decided the whole conversation is the opportunity

Dove committed publicly to never using AI to generate or alter images of women’s bodies in advertising. Aerie made a similar call on AI generated models. Glossier, which has spent years building its identity around real skin and unretouched community content, has essentially positioned its entire aesthetic as the anti-AI option.

These aren’t just ethical positions. They’re brand strategies.

When the market is flooded with AI-generated flawlessness, “human made” starts to feel like a premium. Which is either inspiring or a bit ironic depending on how you look at it. (Probably both.)

The Vogue/Guess AI model situation in mid 2025... where an AI-generated model appeared without clear disclosure, pushed the whole debate into the open. The reaction wasn’t just about representation or jobs, though those are real conversations. It was about something more fundamental... if the person in the image was never a person, what exactly is the image selling?

So where does that leave brands right now?

The split isn’t really AI users vs. non-AI users anymore. It’s between brands that understand their value is built on perceived craft and human effort, and are using AI in ways that actually honour that, and brands that are quietly hoping nobody notices the difference.

People notice.

The ones coming through this with their reputation intact won’t be the loudest AI adopters or the most dramatic AI refusers. They’ll be the ones who asked the harder question before hitting publish: does this feel like it was made for someone... or just made?

Curious what others are seeing out there — especially anyone working directly with brands navigating this. Where’s the line landing for you?