AI and human-washing: Was marketing ever completely honest, anyway?

Marketing has always been prone to spin and the distortion of reality. Now we're just debating whether it should come with a disclosure label. 

I've been in the marketing business since the 1990s, and I can tell you with absolute certainty: we've never been completely honest about how we create the images that sell products. Not in the way people think we have, anyway.

Here's what fascinates me about the current panic over AI in marketing: 73% of consumers say they value authenticity in brand communications, yet 82% accept enhanced product photography as standard practice. That gap tells you everything you need to know about the authenticity debate we're having right now. We're arguing about the wrong thing.

When I started at Macy's in retail advertising—before design work was even digital—models' clothes were pinned so they fit better than they ever would when purchased. After photography, both the clothing and the models were heavily airbrushed. What customers saw 40 years ago was already a synthetic reality. They may or may not have realized this, but they embraced it anyway. Those impossibly skinny models wearing clothes that fit in impossible ways? Everyone knew it was unrealistic, but we all went with it.

So when people ask me if using AI to create marketing content is fundamentally dishonest, I have to push back on the premise. The question isn't whether AI is honest or dishonest. The question is: why are we suddenly demanding a level of transparency we've never required before?

The Reality of Marketing Enhancement: A History We've Conveniently Forgotten

Let me walk you through what we've already accepted as standard practice in marketing, because I think we've developed collective amnesia about how this industry actually works.

Product Photography and Retouching

The airbrushing I mentioned from my Macy's days was just the beginning. Today, every product image you see has been enhanced in ways that would shock most consumers. Colors are adjusted, textures are perfected, and imperfections are eliminated. We've been doing this for decades, and nobody calls it dishonest anymore. It's just... marketing.

Automotive Advertising

Here's something that should blow your mind: approximately 90% of automotive advertising today uses CGI, not actual photography. Those cars you see racing down impossibly scenic roads with impossibly shiny paint and perfectly aligned panels? They're 3D renders. The cars often don't even exist yet when the ads are created.

Can a little Toyota really do 100 mph on a twisty mountain road like those renders show? Of course not. Are customers fooled? Maybe some are. But we all understand on some level that we're looking at an idealized version of reality. We've made peace with that enhancement because it serves a purpose—it shows us the aspiration, the possibility, the best version of what we might experience.

Packaging and Product Design

The same 3D rendering technology has been standard in packaging design for years. That cereal box, that shampoo bottle, that tech product packaging—it's all been rendered in ways that create an impossibly perfect version of the physical product. The colors are more vibrant, the surfaces more flawless, the proportions more ideal than what you'll actually hold in your hands.

Fashion Industry Standards

Beyond the pinning and airbrushing I experienced early in my career, the fashion industry has been using 16-year-old models and presenting them as if they're in their twenties or older. Post-production techniques have been standard practice for so long that we don't even think about them anymore. Every fashion campaign you see has been enhanced, adjusted, and perfected in ways that have nothing to do with reality.

The progression from airbrush to Photoshop to AI isn't a revolution—it's an evolution. Each tool made the enhancement process faster, more accessible, and more sophisticated. But the fundamental practice? That's remained constant.

The Mango Moment: When AI Became Undeniable

This brings me to a campaign that I continue to look at in amazement: Mango's AI-generated campaign for their teen line.

Mango, a global fashion retailer, created an entire campaign using generative AI as part of their Strategic Plan for 2024-2026, which explicitly aims to create value through technological advancement. The results were stunning—so good that I keep going back to study them. It's possible there was some human retouching, just like we did with photos before, to perfect certain elements. But the core creation was AI-generated.

Here's what's remarkable: there wasn't the backlash that hit American brands like J.Crew and Guess when they tried similar approaches.

J.Crew has a loyal customer base, and those customers felt betrayed by what they perceived as a lack of transparency and authenticity. (There's that word again—authenticity.) But I suspect much of the anger came from people in the design and photography industries who saw their jobs threatened.

Guess faced similar criticism when they featured AI-generated models in Vogue. A viral TikTok video exposed the "fake women," leading to public outcry about job displacement and unrealistic beauty standards. Critics were concerned about real models and photographers losing work.

But Mango? They executed it in a way that worked. The campaign was part of a transparent strategic initiative. The quality was exceptional. And critically, they understood their audience and market positioning.

What does this tell us? That AI in fashion and marketing isn't going away, no matter how many people complain. Large organizations are taking this seriously, and the results are becoming incredible. The genie is out of the bottle.

Now, I'll be honest—I do question clothing products generated entirely in AI. Does it really look and fit that way? It can't be perfect. But then I remember the pinned clothes and airbrushing at Macy's, and I realize we've always had this gap between representation and reality.

The "Human-Washing" We've Always Practiced

There's a term floating around now: "AI-washing"—brands hiding their use of AI. But here's what nobody wants to admit: we've always practiced "human-washing" in marketing.

We've always obscured the production process. We've never disclosed every tool, technique, or enhancement we used. When was the last time you saw a fashion ad with a disclaimer: "Model's skin retouched, clothing pinned for better fit, colors enhanced, lighting artificially perfected"? Never. Because that's understood to be part of the creative process.

The dishonesty, if you want to call it that, has always been there. People have a phobia of AI right now, and they're looking for disclosure. Companies know this, and they'd rather not admit they're using AI because it's bad PR. But it's happening anyway, which is why I argue for what I call an "AI covenant" with customers—a clear, published framework for transparency.

The challenge is that it's going to take time for the public to understand what AI actually is. They might never fully understand, but they sure as heck know they don't like it right now. That's the reality we're navigating.

Where the Ethical Line Actually Exists

So where do I draw the line? When does enhancement become deception?

I have real concerns about AI's depictions of physical products you're going to purchase. But I have the same concerns about 3D rendered items in general. It's potentially deceptive—it's not the real thing. We can only hope that creators do their best to accurately represent their actual products.

The more profound ethical questions go beyond marketing. I was recently in Las Vegas watching a hologram of Whitney Houston performing her hits. I found it deeply unsettling. It's now possible to upload your skills, your thinking, your voice into AI—to create what many people call a digital copy. Who owns this? Who gives permission to make a digital copy of you?

This is already happening. Little pieces of all of us are being integrated into AI, and there's nothing we can do about it right now. Who owns the rights to your likeness after death? We're not all celebrities with agents and lawyers. Who would own a digital copy of you after you're gone?

These are the ethical questions that are going to be difficult to answer. But they're also distractions from the immediate strategic reality facing marketing leaders.

The Strategic Mindset Shift Marketing Leaders Must Make

If you're a marketing leader reading this and thinking about AI integration, here's what you need to understand: we're approaching a split-in-the-road moment similar to the internet revolution of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

I watched a lot of people lose their jobs when we switched to internet-based strategy in marketing. I kept mine and suddenly found myself in charge. The people who adapted, who retooled, who understood that their knowledge and creativity were being boosted rather than replaced—they thrived. The ones who resisted? They took the exit ramp and never came back.

We're coming up on that moment again. Everybody who's on board with AI keeps going. Everybody who's not takes an exit ramp, and that'll be it.

Here's what that mindset shift looks like in practice:

Stop Debating Philosophy, Start Evaluating Tools

The authenticity debate is a distraction from strategic opportunity. Your competitors aren't sitting around having philosophical discussions about the nature of reality in marketing. They're implementing tools that let them work faster, more efficiently, and more creatively than ever before.

Understand the Workflow Implications

You need to understand what these tools actually are and what they mean holistically to your workflow and future. A lot of people aren't even there yet, and those are the people who are just going to disappear. You can't make strategic decisions about something you don't understand.

Address the Communication Challenge

For internal agencies or agencies working with consumer products companies, there needs to be a conversation about transparency with customers. These customers are sensitive right now, and it can be a PR mess to have a leak about AI-generated marketing assets.

I've already dealt with clients who think, "Oh, the AI's doing it, so why are you charging so much?" This is a complicated communication challenge. AI helps you do better work faster, but that doesn't mean it should be cheaper. In fact, this may lead us back to value-based pricing, making hourly rates irrelevant since the time it takes to do work is becoming less meaningful.

Create an AI Covenant

Before you can communicate externally, you need an internal strategy. What will you use AI for? What won't you use it for? How will you monitor quality and appropriateness? What will you disclose to customers?

Then you need an external covenant—a published framework that promises certain transparency when something is AI-generated. Now, this gets complicated because we're starting to use AI for every bit of our workflow. At what point does disclosure become meaningless because AI is everywhere?

That's the conversation we need to be having, not whether AI is "authentic" or not.

The Competitive Reality Nobody Wants to Acknowledge

Here's the hard truth: if brands don't adapt to AI tools, they're going to fall behind in ways they can't recover from.

The efficiency gap is opening up right now. The creative possibilities your competitors will have access to are expanding daily. The budget implications of not adapting are significant. We're not talking about a gradual shift—we're talking about a cliff.

I think we're coming up to a moment where there will be a burst of opportunity to set up AI tools and workflows in companies. That will generate work. But once all that is set up, I do think there will be a drop in the workforce around marketing, similar to the year 2000 surge in the web industry and then the subsequent crash.

This is a dire situation for a lot of professionals. If they don't embrace these tools and the efficiencies they enable, they won't just struggle to get jobs—they'll become completely uncompetitive in the marketplace.

What We Should Actually Be Talking About

If I could get marketing leaders to change one thing about how they're thinking about AI and authenticity, it would be this: stop treating AI as a unique ethical challenge and start treating it as what it is—the latest evolution in a long history of creative enhancement.

We've always modified images of our products. We've always used flowery copy and exaggerated the value proposition. We've always created idealized versions of reality. This is not something new.

The real conversations we should be having are:

How do we communicate with customers about our use of AI in ways that build trust rather than erode it?

How do we help our teams adapt to these tools so they can do better work with less stress?

What's our internal strategy for responsible AI use, and how do we monitor it?
How do we navigate the sensitivity around replacing human models and creators with synthetic alternatives?

The replacement of people with synthetic people—that's where the real discomfort lies. That's what makes AI feel different from Photoshop or CGI. And that's a legitimate concern that leadership needs to address thoughtfully.

But here's what I know from being in the trenches of AI implementation: these tools are helping people do great work faster with less stress. Your knowledge, capabilities, and creativity are all boosted by AI. You can do things that were never possible before.

The question isn't whether marketing was ever honest. The question is whether we're ready to be honest with ourselves about what marketing has always been—and what it's becoming.

The authenticity paradox isn't about AI. It's about our collective willingness to acknowledge that we've always valued the enhanced version of reality over the literal one. AI is just making that truth harder to ignore.

And maybe that's not such a bad thing.