AI models cut shoot costs 90%: John Horner warns of fashion threat

The Reuters investigation pulls together two sides of the same shift: brands are already writing AI-alteration and future-use clauses into confidential photo-shoot contracts, while agency directors say the technology poses an existential threat to their business. The contracts from Diesel, Calvin Klein and L’Oreal show that proposed terms for AI-created alterations and future image use are moving from concept to paper, even as regulation governing ownership or use of digital twins remains scant. That gap leaves models exposed to unpaid replication of their image or replacement by entirely synthetic models. John Horner, head of the British Fashion Model Agents Association, is named in the report as flagging the shift, underscoring that industry representatives are aware of the economics at stake — cost cuts of 90% or more versus human photo shoots — and the contractual vacuum around digital likenesses.