Show Notes
Every industry is wrestling with the same big-ticket AI questions around fair use, labelling, and disclosure. But fashion has a set of AI legal quandaries all of its own.
Today, Ben talks to Anthony "Tony" Lupo, Chairman of legal firm ArentFox Schiff, and US general counsel for a roster of global fashion and retail brands, including Diane von Furstenberg, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Fila, Lacoste, Diesel, and Christian Louboutin.
Tony also runs Fashion Counsel, a pre-eminent legal blog for the fashion industry.
Together, they run through some of our readers' top concerns about the legal ramifications of AI, from likenesses / personas and model releases, to Fair Use, the EU AI Act, the expanding risk surface of brands extending what they know about consumers, and why brands haven't gone after the creators of image generation models that can reproduce their logos, colours, and other elements on command.
More from The Interline Podcast
Every fashion brand is pursuing personalisation and questioning how AI changes the way they engage with their consumer, but the most important case studies might be found in beauty, where regulated claims, shopper participation, and outcome measurement over time create a potent loop. To compare the two industries, Ben talks to Anastasia Georgievskaya, CEO of Haut.AI.
Grace and Ben debate the top fashion technology headlines from the last week. This time around: Getty Images is going bankrupt. Is AI solely to blame? - https://www.reuters.com/business/getty-images-go-private-after-restructuring-deal-2026-10-12/ Is AI accountability a new brand edge? - https://www.vogue.com/article/op-ed-ai-accountability-is-the-new-brand-equity Personal agents and their potential impact on drop-centric models and returns - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8vgxpwlx9wko Embedded circuits in yarns - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41928-026-01712-2 Cybersecurity for physical retail premises, through the lens of melting cheese - https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/10/fridge-hack-costing-millions-and-sparking-fires-stemmed-from-poor-security/
Individual brands have their own idiosyncratic relationships with generated images, but fashion, on aggregate, has embraced the value of synthetic photography for eCommerce in particular - even in the face of cultural polarisation. What's next for synthetic content? And what does it mean to create an authentic version of something that definitionally isn't real? To have that very "now" debate, Ben brings on Eran Dagan, CEO of Botika.
Grace and Ben analyse the most interesting fashion technology news headlines from the last week. This week's stories:
When it comes to visually representing a product, and building alignment around that visualisation, brands and retailers are placing some serious bets on the capabilities of both general-purpose frontier models and fashion-specific tooling. But is AI “good enough” to change the overall go-to-market trajectory?