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Key Takeaways:
The US Department of Labor (DOL) has released principles and best practices focused on AI use in the workplace, including transparency, worker empowerment, and human oversight – all of which will be particularly relevant for fashion companies integrating AI technologies. Future regulations may restrict or place limits on the use of AI-generated models in fashion to ensure they don’t undermine human labour rights or mislead consumers.
At the 2024 United Nations Biodiversity Conference – known also as COP16 – French luxury group Kering became one of the first to adopt science-based targets for nature protection, pledging to reduce water withdrawal, protect biodiversity in sourcing regions, and mitigate environmental impacts through measurable and time-bound goals.
While fashion is beginning to engage with biodiversity targets, progress remains slow and complicated by fragmented supply chains and other macroeconomic factors. Even so, making gradual, transparent steps is likely to be better than sweeping, ineffective promises.
Will future regulations affect AI-generated brand campaigns?
All eyes were on the US election this week. It will take time to digest what the outcome of that vote will mean – although import tariffs have the potential to affect prices in a pronounced way if they are implemented on the scale the new President-elect has spoken about in the past.
The legislative agenda is also, at this point in time, difficult to predict, since initiatives being implemented today could be reversed come January 2025. And the relationship between “big tech” and the Trump campaign could easily see current ideas being quickly unwound. But for the time being at least, the US has forged ahead with tentative steps towards formalising how AI should be used in the world of work.
To wit: the US Department of Labor (DOL) recently released a comprehensive set of Principles and Best Practices for employers implementing AI systems in the workplace. The DOL’s guidance centres on eight principles first announced in President Biden’s 2023 Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence. There is an emphasis on worker empowerment (the “North Star” of the guidelines); ethically developing AI; establishing AI governance and human oversight; ensuring transparency in AI use; protecting labour and employment rights; using AI to enable workers; supporting workers impacted by AI; and ensuring responsible use of worker data.
The DOL’s principles offer practical steps for companies across industries, but also in the fashion supply chain, making the guidance particularly relevant and actionable for businesses navigating the integration of AI technologies. This differs from other guidelines and regulations that exist for highly sensitive sectors like technology, healthcare, and defence.
But let’s not forget, it is still the AI Wild West as the end of 2024 draws near. How, for instance, will the DOL’s guidelines apply to the increasing usage of AI-generated models in brands’ marketing campaigns and advertisements?
A few months back, The Interline wrote about the New York State Fashion Workers Act and its regulation of management agencies to safeguard models and other industry professionals from exploitation. An amendment to the Act, made in January of this year, ensures that models are now protected from brands, agencies and other entities using or altering their digital likeness without permission. We even speculated that it was a matter of time before brands would ramp up their use of AI models taking the place of real models and photoshoots. And now, Spanish retailer Mango is doing exactly this.
mango, July 2024.
The company piloted its first AI-generated campaign in July 2024, and this week added more AI-generated models to showcase one of their latest collections for teens. The garments worn by the AI models are real and available to customers for purchase, and Mango reportedly plans to expand its use of the AI models to its other collections too.
Interestingly, the major source of complaints around this campaign have not been focused on the work taken away from humans, or the dubious ethical grounds for generating diverse models – they’ve instead concentrated on the fact that the end results simply don’t look as good as people feel they should. And if the quality bar isn’t being reached, we might reasonably ask, what’s the point in offering up those other sacrifices?
mango: ‘The model’s image has been created using artificial intelligence.’
One has to wonder, with more and more AI rules and laws being written, is there a world in which certain regulations put a cap on the use of AI-generated models? Or is the expectation that market distaste will do the hard work instead.
Given the DOL’s emphasis on human oversight, governance, and worker protection, there could well be future regulations aimed at ensuring that AI-generated models are used in ways that don’t exploit or mislead consumers, or displace real human workers without fair compensation or transparency. What this will look like is anyone’s guess at this point. What seems unlikely, though, is the unbridled use of AI by fashion companies – especially where there is overlap with real world fashion industry jobs for human beings.
Kering leads the way for fashion with its science-based targets for nature at COP16
The world’s largest biodiversity summit, known as COP16 or Nature COP, concluded this week in Cali, Colombia. The past two weeks saw thousands of policymakers, conservationists, and business leaders gather to discuss a way forward for protecting fragile ecosystems. Attendance from businesses tripled this year, with over 3,000 companies participating compared to around 1,000 in 2022, as reported by The Wall Street Journal.
cop16, cali colombia
It’s not clear how many were from the fashion industry, but nature protection should be high on every fashion company’s priority list. The industry draws heavily from natural resources like cotton, wool, silk, leather, and plant-based dyes. Yet, it has long contributed to the degradation of the very ecosystems it depends on for these materials – exacerbated in recent years by fast fashion.
It’s undeniable that change is needed, yet few are truly willing to back their words with action and investment. Kering – parent company of Gucci, Balenciaga, and Yves Saint Laurent – is aiming to be that exception. Following a year-long pilot project by the Science Based Targets Network (SBTN), Kering became one of the first three companies (along with pharmaceuticals giant GSK and building materials company Holcim) to adopt science-based targets to protect nature. The SBTN defines these targets as “measurable, actionable, and time-bound objectives, based on the best available science, that allow actors to align with Earth’s limits and societal sustainability goals.”
The three companies have pledged to achieve these goals and to transparently report their progress – responding to the rising pressure to protect biodiversity. By 2030, Kering aims to reduce freshwater withdrawal by 21% in Tuscany’s Arno basin (where the majority of its tanneries and supplier tanneries are based) and ensure that 100% of its leather sourcing comes from no-deforestation and conversion-free areas by 2027. The company is also committed to reducing its agricultural land footprint by 3% from 2022 levels, while supporting ecological and social projects in Mongolia, India, and South Africa.
Of the companies that participated in the pilot – including fashion and beauty heavyweights like LVMH, L’Occitane, and H&M – the majority managed to carry out the essential phases: impact assessment, prioritisation, and target setting. While some aim to publicly adopt their validated targets by the January 10 2025 deadline, others plan to revise and resubmit their goals using SBTN’s latest methodologies. A portion of the participants treated the pilot mainly as an opportunity to experiment and learn from the process.
A difficult part of this is reflecting that this progress is to be acknowledged, even though frustratingly gradual. The fashion industry is already too familiar with the glacial pace of progress toward corporate climate goals – and setting targets is only the beginning of a difficult journey to reduce the fashion industry’s environmental footprint. And, in many respects, tackling biodiversity loss is a more complex challenge than addressing carbon emissions, with the lack of transparency and fragmentation in supply chains means that most brands are largely unaware of the origins of the raw materials they rely on. Not to mention that efforts to meet ambitious climate goals are facing significant hurdles amid this period of global economic and political instability.
So perhaps slow, steady progress is preferable to the sweeping promises of becoming more nature-friendly; promises that, as we’ve seen with climate commitments, often turn out to be little more than a facade while the industry continues business as usual.
The best from The Interline:
This week on The Interline, Roni GamZon, Founder of BioFluff, underlines why fashion needs novel materials, and what mindset the industry will have to adopt for those materials and methods to scale.
Next, we spoke with Hyland’s Global Director of Digital Asset Management Practice on sustainability in fashion requiring brands to prioritise initiatives based on business health, operational maturity, and market demands while balancing compliance, consumer preferences, and cost reduction strategies.
We partner with Kornit to discuss how digital fabric printing is empowering fashion producers to maximise output with minimal resources, lower their carbon footprint, unlock creativity and reactivity, and drive growth.
And closing out this week, two special guests join The Interline podcast from Munich Fabric Start – one of the leading textile trade shows in Europe – to discuss some of the biggest challenges in fashion today.
The post New Guidelines For AI In The Workplace, And Fashion Plans To Better Protect Biodiversity appeared first on The Interline.
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