A) J. Crew and others are using AI models instead of real models. Retail modeling was steady pay-the-bills work for models and actors and is actively being replaced by AI image generators— sometimes trained on images of a particular model they’re no longer paying. Writers and stock photographers are in much worse shape.

B) Even in cases where AI actors are used where there wouldn’t have been actors before, the skillset is still devalued, and even that modest insulation for higher-end work is almost certainly temporary. Someone doing a worse version of what you do for 1% of your pay affects the market, and saving 99% is great incentive for companies to change their strategy until the worse version is good enough.