Model Behavior AI has claimed its latest victim, now that Levi Strauss is apparently going to start outsourcing its model diversity to algorithms. Last week, Levi Strauss announced that it would be partnering with the artificial intelligence firm Lalaland.ai, which according to a press release is a “digital fashion studio that builds customized AI-generated models” in an effort to — and we promise we’re not joking here — increase “the number and diversity of our models for our products in a sustainable way.” Although a company executive promised in the press release that “AI will likely never fully replace human models for us,” folks are, unsurprisingly, pretty irked. “AI generated models huh?” games journalist Jefferey Rousseau tweeted. “I guess all the people of color just don’t exist anymore.” Creative workers’ rights advocate Thom Binding had even harsher words for the move. “Levi’s using AI to generate ‘more diverse models’ instead of, you know, actually hiring more diverse models is exactly the kind of crap you’d expect from this industry,” the British union organizer mused. “I’m so sick of this shit and all the tech-mad charlatans enabling these behaviours in their clients.” Pant Hill As Mashable helpfully points out, this move comes about a year after the company laid off 700 people when cutting 15 percent of its staff, saving the company a reported $100 million, per USA Today’s reporting at the time, which also noted that the company had experienced a drop in sales during the COVID-19 pandemic. While we neither know how much…Levi's Mocked for Using AI to Generate "Diverse" Denim Models