AI didn’t destroy Jeanswest’s brand … it was already dead

If you didn’t understand what the term “AI slop” was meant to indicate, Jeanswest just did you a big favour. Its recent ad campaign, and I use that term loosely, has become the industry reference point for what happens when marketers run headlong into badly done AI advertising.

The struggling fashion retailer—fresh from its second collapse into administration and conversion to online-only operations—recently posted two 20-second spots on Instagram. They feature two blonde women strolling on a beach and hanging in a cafe, both in identical outfits.

The women were AI-generated. Obviously. Painfully. Their movements were blurry and unnatural. Weirdly, they appeared to be the same person but a few years and sizes apart. Their faces had that cartoonlike quality that screams “I am not really here”—occasionally dissolving for a half-second into something semi-demonic before snapping back to unreal catalogue model.