A fashion copywriter on AI use by luxury brands

I used to think my job was safe from AI. I still do, actually, except when I panic.

By Marine Desnoue

One October morning, a Parisian high jewelry house – one of those storied maisons with large rounded windows crowned by branded awnings on Place Vendôme – reached out about a social media copywriting gig. This Place Vendôme, branded-awned storied maison has always been a bit outside the usual rules. Not bourgeois, not nostalgic, but, say, gently bold. I had noticed, though, that their tone of voice didn’t reflect that at all. So when I was asked to do some writing tests, I made sure to slip in a little personality, a little attitude, a little bite. Not too much, just enough.

“Your work is very good, and the exercise was successful,” they said, “but we went with someone else who fit the project’s needs a bit better.” I took it in good sport, but I did want to see what someone else who fit the project’s needs a bit better would come up with. And so I watched. I watched as they posted painfully generic captions on Instagram five times a week. Pointless vacuities with vague statements that, even when squinting hard, barely made sense.

My friend Bobby*, too, agreed. Bobby is an aspiring rock star, who walks dogs by day and plays drums by night. Bobby always wears hiking shoes and, for some reason, inside out long-sleeve tees. Bobby is clueless about fashion – yet, when I showed him the painfully generic captions, there was no hesitation. “It sounds very AI-generated,” he said. Not that it was (I think? I hope. We’ll never know). It just looked like it. AI has that off-the-shelf quality that’s starting to crop up everywhere. It sells us the idea that language can be automated and standardised and stuffed into a one-size-fits-all box.

“While we have never talked directly about the subject, clients are experimenting more with AI for copywriting,” says Amy Verner, a writer who has worked with just about everyone in the fashion world. “For certain texts where the requirements are straightforward and the tone is direct, AI can be more efficient, never mind cost-saving.” And that’s where the story gets slippery.