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a16zBeyond Avatars: How AI is Reshaping Online Identity (Danny Postma and Sinead Bovell)
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
AI Tools Let Anyone Build Models, Headshots, and Digital Identities
- Futurist and model Sinead Bovell explains that she foresaw AI automating e-commerce fashion modeling because that work involves small, fairly robotic variations in posing, and companies like Zalando were already researching the technology by 2019.
- Indie hacker Danny Postma describes building projects like Deep Agency, Headshot Pro, and Profile Picture AI by combining DreamBooth, StyleGAN, and clothing-fitting models, at costs as low as 60 cents to train a model and a fraction of a cent per photo.
- Bovell and host Steph Smith discuss the deflationary nature of technology, with downward pressure on wages and open questions about likeness, IP, and copyright when identities and designs are automated.
- Postma argues that because AI products have little moat, distribution and marketing matter as much as building, and that stacking many custom models (about 15 for Headshot Pro) and focusing on SEO and real problems helps products outlast hype.
- The guests look ahead to AI as a pre-production tool, social platforms letting users drop virtual twins into shopping content, and low-barrier ways to start building with hosted models and no-code tools.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasCreative jobs were not as safe from automation as people assumed.
Bovell says her 2020 article shocked many because few were discussing automation of creative work like modeling, and that people only now see how it could materialize as generative AI explodes.
The technology for AI fashion models already exists.
Postma says deepfake-style cloning, non-existent face generation, and AI clothing fitting are all available now, and it is up to a company that understands the fashion industry to take it to the next level.
Generating AI imagery is extremely cheap.
Postma says training a model on a face costs about 60 cents and each photo a fraction of a cent, which makes it especially attractive to small clothing brands that couldn't afford models.
Technology tends to push wages and prices down.
Bovell notes that although a model could be in multiple places at once and earn more, a greater supply of human-passing identities could create downward pressure on prices, and likeness and community representation also get automated.
Distribution and marketing matter more when there is little moat.
Postma learned this when Lensa swooped in and captured the profile picture market; he now focuses on SEO, backlinks, and solving small problems rather than building on hype.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesI barely sleep at night because every time I wake up the next morning, there's something new that's launched that already makes the whole technology obsolete.
— Danny Postma
if you look at the history of technology, technology is often quite deflationary over time, especially when it comes to wages.
— Sinéad Bovell
Distribution is everything. Marketing is everything. It's really important. It's always been important with product launches, and now especially with AI where you have less of a moat.
— Danny Postma
Focus on, like, something small, some small problems to solve, and do your marketing. Do the distribution. Don't just build. You gotta sell it.
— Danny Postma
Fashion is really a, is really a communicator of, of culture, and now we can push the bounds on that almost infinitely.
— Sinéad Bovell
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
