Welcome to the Scoop: a weekly email series where I ask fashion insiders about the stories of the week. It’s a way for the Vogue Business community to catch up on the latest headlines and get a little inside scoop every Friday.

This week, we have two guests: photographer Shahram Saadat and Vogue Business’s art director Niall Wilson. They’re here to talk about something close to my heart—and probably on our noses and navels too: the images we created for our latest series, The Future of AI.

We do a few of these series every year. They aim to answer the questions the industry is dealing with at a specific moment. For example, when Matches collapsed, we published The Future of Shopping. Or when our team couldn’t stop guessing how Ozempic and tweakments would change our beauty standards, we put together The Future of Appearance.

Getting the images right for this project was a journey in itself. It revealed a lot about the current debate around AI and image creation. But I’ll let Shahram and Niall explain.

Hi Niall and Shahram! Tell me about the idea behind the photos. What were you trying to achieve?

Niall: Last year, we published a series on Vogue Business called The Future of Appearance. To create the visuals, I used ChatGPT’s image-generation tool with appearance-based predictions from the articles. They focused on what we’ll look like in 10 years as technology advances. This time, since the series is about AI, the obvious choice would have been to do something similar. But we wanted to go the opposite way and work with a photographer to create something analog—in a way, ‘anti-AI.’

Still, we briefed Shahram the same way you would an AI tool. We kept the instructions very simple, using single-sentence prompts that still let him be creative.

Shahram: I was intrigued when Niall emailed only text prompts as a brief. Normally, as a photographer, you get a mood board and a more specific image outline. I’ve been interested in how AI is evolving and the strange images those tools often produce. I thought it would be interesting to recreate those odd moments in a tangible way, using physical techniques.

Niall: Shahram’s work stood out to us because he has a slightly dystopian, futuristic style in how he distorts some of his images. For example, he did this really cool shoot with a car wash that I first thought was CGI. But it was actually photographed from outside the car, looking in, as water washed over the windshield. It created this really cool distorted effect.

Visuals for the Future of AI series, photographed by Shahram Saadat and art directed by Niall Wilson.
Photo: Shahram Saadat/ Artwork by Vogue Business

Shahram, this dystopian aesthetic Niall mentioned—is it a conscious choice?

Shahram: Not really. What interests me is everyday life and trying to capture it in a more surreal way. The car wash photo he mentioned: I was asked to do a series of pictures based on people taking a break. I thought, when do you take a break and not feel guilty? My mind went straight to a car wash. If you need to shower, you can do it faster or slower depending on your schedule.

Nowadays, you have to make the most of your time. But a car wash is a forced moment of pause. My work is rooted in documentary, but I use different tools—like cameras, lenses, or lighting—to make everyday moments seem a bit out of the ordinary.

Instagram content

Niall, you’re a designer by trade. Do you use AI often in your work?

Niall: For The Future of Appearance, I generated the visuals using ChatGPT. That was a year ago, when image generation was becoming popular and people were tapping into AI trends on social media. ChatGPT had just introduced its own image generator. So it was more of an experiment, and it made sense to use that tool because the series itself focused on something that didn’t exist yet.

But let me tell you, it wasn’t easy.Not at all. It took a lot of fine-tuning. AI is often presented as the easy way out, but I really feel that to get anything worthwhile—or even something that looks halfway decent—it requires a lot of prompting and tweaking, a lot of back and forth. I wouldn’t say I’d use it as part of my daily routine, except for writing boring emails and the occasional image retouch.

Visuals for the Future of Appearance series, which were generated using OpenAI GPT-4o’s image-generation tool and guided entirely by Niall Wilson through written prompts.
Artwork: Vogue Business, generated with ChatGPT

Shahram: I use it a bit for retouching. It’s completely changed the industry, because retouchers used to be swamped with compositing and extensions, but now more of them are turning to AI and using it to make their workflow easier. As for my own work, I was into the early versions of image generators, which produced images that looked so absurd—almost like a digital Salvador Dali. Now, the images look a bit too real, a bit too much like the ads you see on TV, but they lack that human touch. You can see the lack of emotion in people’s faces. For a lot of people, when it first came out, it was a bit of a trend. Now, people are slowly going back to their old methods or learning to work with it.

Can AI ever develop taste?
Shahram: If it’s guided, maybe. But then again, humans don’t always have taste either. As we grow and expand our own skills, our taste grows too. So maybe the same thing will happen with AI as it gets more input and more information. That’s how the tool works, and that’s why it’s improved so much over the last five years. It’s not making Salvador Dali eggs and chickens anymore. I think over time, it will develop its own taste. Right now, AI needs someone with taste to operate it.

How do you see AI shaping luxury and fashion?
Niall: Luxury and AI feel like opposites to me. Luxury is built on scarcity and exclusivity. AI is available to everyone. There’s nothing luxurious about a £20 subscription to OpenAI. It needs to stay in the background, otherwise I don’t see how those two things can work together.

You can catch up with last week’s Scoop with Asics SportStyle’s Anissa Jaffery here.

Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about intermittent fasting rewritten for clarity and a natural tone

BeginnerLevel Questions

1 What exactly is intermittent fasting
Its an eating pattern that cycles between periods of eating and periods of fasting It doesnt tell you what to eat but when to eat

2 Is it just starving yourself
No Its a planned schedule not starvation You still eat enough calories and nutrients you just compress your eating window into a shorter part of the day

3 Whats the most common way to start
The 168 method You fast for 16 hours and eat all your meals within an 8hour window

4 Can I drink water while fasting
Yes absolutely Water black coffee and unsweetened tea are generally allowed They dont break your fast

5 Will I lose muscle mass
Not if you do it right If you eat enough protein and do resistance training you can maintain or even build muscle while intermittent fasting

Intermediate Advanced Questions

6 What are the real health benefits beyond weight loss
Research suggests it can improve insulin sensitivity reduce inflammation support cellular repair and may boost brain health Weight loss is just one common result

7 What is autophagy and how do I trigger it
Autophagy is your bodys natural process of cleaning out damaged cells It typically kicks in after 1624 hours of fasting The longer you fast the more autophagy ramps up

8 Can I work out while fasted
Yes many people do Fasted workouts can improve fat burning but you may feel weaker at first Start with lowintensity exercise and see how your body responds

9 Why do I feel dizzy or irritable in the beginning
Your body is adapting to burning fat for fuel instead of glucose This is often called the keto flu and usually passes within a few days Stay hydrated and consider adding a pinch of salt to your water

10 Can I take supplements or medications while fasting
It depends Most medications should be taken with food unless your doctor says otherwise Fatsoluble vitamins A D E