What does “real” mean in the AI era? For Aerie, American Eagle’s lounge and lingerie brand, realness is entirely human — untouched or altered by AI. As consumers and brands wrestle with how to approach the rapidly advancing tech, the brand is taking a stance against it. In October last year, Aerie expanded its “100% Aerie Real” anti-retouching pledge to never use AI-generated bodies or people in their marketing. And today, the brand is taking it one step further with the release of a bold new anti-AI film campaign, starring untouched beauty advocate Pamela Anderson.
“I thought it was a clever way to draw attention to [AI images] because it’s very worrisome,” Anderson tells Vogue. “To me, as a woman, as a consumer, as a mother, I always think, what is happening? What is the difference between AI and real? How are we supposed to know? It was already disheartening at times to look at fashion magazines and see celebrities and models with retouching, but this is another level.”
Ever since appearing at Paris Fashion Week makeup-free in 2023, Anderson has become a leading voice for natural beauty and ageing authentically. In the film, which will live across Aerie’s social channels, as well as placements on YouTube, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney, and HBO, her voice acts as the prompting force issuing commands into a supposedly AI-generated world, unable to achieve the authentic human “real-feeling” result she wants from a scene with lifeless models. The scene then dissolves into a “real” Aerie set, where the models come alive, and Anderson appears before the camera to say: “You can’t prompt this.”
A large part of luxury marketing is amping up its messaging around craft, process, and humanity, with brands like Loewe, Bottega Veneta, Jacquemus, and Miu Miu all centering their recent campaigns around these values and showcasing the handmaking processes behind their products. Another tranche have leaned into AI imagery — most recently Prada, via its Spring/Summer 2026 campaign with artist Jordan Wolfson, as well as Gucci and Valentino — but faced backlash from creatives and consumers online. Aerie, however, is one of the first fashion brands to adopt an explicit anti-AI stance as the central message in its marketing. It’s a bold tactic that seems to be resonating with consumers. The brand dropped its first “real people” anti-AI Instagram campaign in October last year, which quickly went viral.
“Since we soft-launched the anti-AI message in October, we’ve seen double-digit growth in brand awareness,” says Stacey McCormick, Aerie’s chief marketing officer. The Aerie brand reported a 23% increase in sales in the fourth quarter of 2025. “We’ve also seen a very strong shift in our awareness and consideration.”
I sit down with Pamela Anderson and Stacey McCormick to find out more about the new film, and the branding strategy behind Aerie’s anti-AI marketing pledge.
Pamela Anderson on set for Aerie’s new anti-AI campaign.Photo: Adrian Martin