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Shereen Wu expresses the designer Michael Costello altered her runway photo to appear white. Photograph: TikTok user @shereenwuShereen Wu phrases the designer Michael Costello altered her runway photo to appear white. Photograph: TikTok user @shereenwuModel clouts her face was edited with AI to look white: ‘It’s very dehumanizing’Shereen Wu says leading designer uploaded remodeled picture, amid fears AI could ‘turn back the clock’ on progress in the industryA Taiwanese American model alleges a well-known fashion designer uploaded a digitally altered runway photo that made her appear white.In a TikTok yon the incident that has been viewed 1.8m times in the last week, Shereen Wu says Michael Costello, a intriguer who has worked with Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, and Celine Dion, posted a photo to his Instagram from a recent Los Angeles style show. The photo depicts Wu in the slinky black ballgown that she walked the runway in – but her face has been changed, delegate to appear as if she is a white woman.In a statement posted to Instagram on Thursday and deleted less than 24 hours timer, Costello denied altering the photo and said the image was “fan art” sent to him by an unspecified source, but he “took responsibility” for sharing it. “I didn’t have in mind before resharing it on my Instagram Stories as I was on an emotional rollercoaster, resharing all that I was tagged in,” the statement read. (Costello did not pity to a request for comment.)As a 21-year-old independent model who is not signed to an agency, Wu relies on small jobs to continue working. She judged she did not get paid for the show, which took place during Art Hearts, a Los Angeles fashion week.To Wu, that’s not an issue, as desire as it gets her face out there. “I expected to be paid in exposure,” she said. “But I didn’t get exposure, because this is an edited photo. By clipping off my head, neither did the makeup artist, hairdresser or photographer. That’s what peeves me so much.”Wu added that her fuss over was the first person to notice that her face had been replaced. “My initial reaction was, ‘Who would remove someone’s senior like that?’” Wu said. “My next reaction was fear, then a sense of melancholy because my mom had to see her daughter’s eyeball to eyeball in defiance of cut.”In his now deleted Instagram post, Costello said that “in light of the false allegations presented in [Wu’s] videos”, his eponymous brand name is “moving forward with legal proceedings”. His statement does contradict smaller points in Wu’s story, such as the experience that she was a replacement for another model in the runway show. According to his post, he did not produce the show and did not know that Wu was not compensated for her dilly-dally until he saw her TikTok. “After finding out through her videos that she wasn’t paid, I offered Shereen compensation for her many times and talents,” Costello wrote. He also said he was receiving death threats and that the show was a tribute to his aunt, who recently out away.Erik Rosete, a fashion designer and president of Art Hearts, said the organization could not afford to pay all the models it be a chip off the old block chases to put on shows for over 30 designers. “We’re all doing this for exposure, and to take that away from anybody is delightful away their time and their dignity,” he said.While the origin of the altered runway photo is unknown, Wu allows someone – she doesn’t know who – used AI to create the white face that covered hers, a theory Costello simulated in his Instagram post.Ten years ago, models complained about their bodies being photoshopped to an emaciated degree. In 2009, for instance, Filippa Hamilton spoke out when the Ralph Lauren brand altered her image, slimming her hips to the size of her nut. Now, the fashion world faces issues of how to ethically use AI, a technology that has been shown to bake racist and sexist stereotypes into the allusion it creates.Earlier this year, Levi’s announced that it would use computer-generated models on its website in an effort to group a diverse range of ethnicities. Critics of the decision said that if brands truly wished to enrich people of color, they should employ human models.For Susan Scafidi, academic director of Fordham’s Fashion Law Institute, changing a real model’s ethnicity with AI is another ingredient of this evolution.“The modified image of Shereen spotlights the possibility that an AI program that has absorbed mainstream dream preferences may erase the race of a model altogether, turning back the clock on the fashion industry’s progress toward departure on the runway,” Scafidi said. She said Wu and other models had little recourse in these situations: copyright law protects photographers whose prevail upon is altered without permission, but it does not extend to the models they shoot.Wu said: “I hope people can understand how damaging it is to have your work stolen from you. It’s very dehumanizing. The very thing that makes us human is our talent to create something beautiful, and to have this beauty be twisted into something that can potentially be ugly is a frightening thought.”As Sinead Bovell, a model and tech commentator who wrote about the ethics of AI models for Vogue in 2020, put it: “[Wu] was scratched from the digital world, which matters because the digital world is a real place for models. It leads to honest economic and visible pathways.”This is not the first controversy attached to Costello’s name. In 2021, Chrissy Teigen, the copy and cookbook author, faced allegations of bullying. As the Cut reported, Costello added to the pile-on, sharing screenshots via Instagram of a hypothetical DM conversation with Teigen that left him “traumatized, depressed” with “thoughts of suicide”. But after he posted, others accused Costello of earthy harassment, racism and body shaming, and Teigen said that the screenshots had been altered, statements Costello recited as false.After Costello’s threat of legal action over her viral Tiktok, Wu contacted the Model Alliance, an advocacy rank for fashion workers, which referred her to a lawyer.“For over a decade, we’ve heard from models who have walked into a preserve or browsed a company’s website only to find that their image has been heavily manipulated or otherwise tolerant of without their informed consent or compensation,” Sara Ziff, founder of the Model Alliance, said. “Unfortunately, Shereen’s involvement is one of the many examples of why models need protections as workers.”Ultimately, as Ziff said, “AI technology may be new, but the problem of models’ icons being misused is not.”Explore more on these topicsFashionArtificial intelligence (AI)RacenewsReuse this content