And neither is anything else on this blog.
I don’t know why I feel the need to write this post, other than the fact that we live in some really strange times. Machines are generating an exponentially increasing volume of content and sharing it with other machines. A lot of blogs I read regularly and used to love have succumbed, and their posts have become garbled ChatGPT or Claude-generated nonsense. You know the ones: They follow an identifiable structure and rhythm that has become obvious to most of us reading it, even if we can’t necessarily say why. It’s like the old Supreme Court case about obscenity: You can’t necessarily define it, but you know it when you see it.
Well, you won’t see that here. I write 100% of the posts you see myself. Most of the photos I post are taken by me, or taken of me with a tripod or by my very patient husband, all with my trusty Canon camera, and edited using old-school pre-AI software. I’m certainly no great photographer or editor by any means, but at least I’m real.
Now, a bit of a disclaimer: I can’t promise that the blog is entirely AI-free, because more and more brands are using AI-generated product shots to advertise their outfits. When I do haul reviews or brand reviews, I often post the product shot alongside a photo of me wearing the same outfit, so you can compare what they look like online versus on a real petite (i.e. me). I have no control over those images. I don’t support the practice, but it would be disingenuous to pretend that it isn’t happening.
(There’s a lot of ongoing debate about whether AI-generated product photos are good or bad for retailers. Optimistically, I could see a case made for the ability to mass-generate product photos showing the same outfit on different body types, shapes, and sizes, including — dare I suggest — petite models. It’s also plausible that AI-assisted virtual try-on technology will make it easier to guess whether a particular item will fit on our bodies before we buy something online. But more pessimistically or realistically, it’s probably just going to put a whole lot of fit models, photographers, editors, and designers out of work, while showcasing clothes on bodies that don’t look quite human or real. Not to mention the very disturbing ethical implications of using human models’ likeness to generate AI, as well as all the other environmental, labour, and economic implications of mass-produced AI. But to fairly delve into those complex issues, I’d need a much longer post, and I’d also need to spend more time exploring the highly concerning ethics of the fast fashion industry in the first place. All valuable topics to explore, of course, but this is a bigger issue.)
Anyway, I just wanted to reassure you that I’m very much human, I write every post you see myself, and I will continue to do so. Any typos, grammatical errors, run-on sentences, rants, or other weird writing choices are entirely generated by yours truly, all 5 foot 1 of me. But as they say, to err is human… and to connect with real humans instead of bots is divine. Or something along those lines.
Happy reading, humans!
