Dior’s Christmas film has become the latest advert to be caught up in a debate about artificial intelligence, after viewers pointed to details they say look machine-made.
The film, “Night in Color”, is a dreamy, Paris-set tale of celebration, presented as hand-drawn by the French fashion house, which has promoted it as the work of artists and released behind-the-scenes footage of its making.
Online, people began comparing frames. They pointed to lettering that warps as it moves, a character’s strangely shaped eye, and a hand that appears to have a finger bone in the wrong place, the kinds of small errors that have become familiar tells of images generated or assisted by AI. Some viewers went further, saying one character appeared to have six fingers.
Dior has been asked about the film by the fashion trade title Business of Fashion and by the animation site Cartoon Brew, but the company had not responded several days after the questions were put to it.
The question is not whether the film is pretty, most viewers agree that it is, but whether a luxury brand whose appeal rests on craft and human skill should be using AI in work it presents as hand-drawn, and whether it should say so. The film arrives in a season when several luxury houses have leaned into hand-drawn animation: Prada, for example, released a hand-drawn campaign by Disney animator John Pomeroy.
For now, the use of AI is an allegation, not something Dior has confirmed or that has been proven. But the episode shows how quickly audiences now examine advertising frame by frame, and how a single warped letter or stray finger can overshadow a campaign that cost far more to make than the questions cost to ask.
Sources: Fast Company; Creative Bloq; Cybernews.
