AI models "conquer" Double 11: technology is not guilty, fraud is

A girl model image in an online store, with hand poses that clearly violate human anatomy.

Behind this chaos lies a mature AI model industry chain. For a real shoot of a piece of clothing, the model, venue, and photography package costs at least two to three hundred yuan; AI-generated model images cost as little as six yuan each, making the cost advantage obvious. Online, collections of AI women's clothing image-generation prompts and livestream-selling workflow tutorials are sold at low prices, with sales often reaching tens of thousands of copies. A merchant sends in one clothing image and can get an AI finished image in half an hour, while a real shoot often takes one or two days. On one side are merchants' practical demands to cut costs and improve efficiency; on the other are consumers' persistent complaints that "the goods don't match the pictures." Some platforms have successively introduced rules to crack down on fake AI images and clarify AI labeling requirements.

First, it should be acknowledged that merchants using AI model images is itself not illegal. Using AI to generate virtual models for product display is a normal application of artificial intelligence, and current law does not prohibit it. Technology itself is not inherently guilty; even real-person photos may be excessively retouched and divorced from the actual product; AI images, as long as they faithfully reproduce the product, are equally legitimate. As many netizens have said: "Real people's displays are not necessarily completely real either. I don't reject well-made AI."

AI is not the original sin, but concealment is a trap. The law never constrains technical tools, but rather misleading and fraud. Whether a merchant's use of AI models constitutes false advertising or consumer fraud has never been judged by the standard of "whether AI is used," but by whether the displayed image is consistent with the actual product and whether information is deliberately concealed. As long as the fabric and cut are objectively presented, quality is not fabricated, defects are not concealed, the AI attribute is proactively labeled, and no false inducement is made, the red line of consumer fraud is not crossed.

Conversely, if the gap between the AI effect image and the actual product is huge, breaking through the boundary of reasonable beautification, and this is compounded by customer service using lies to fob consumers off and deliberately erasing AI labels, it is very easy for this to be deemed consumer fraud. Under Article 55 of the Law on the Protection of Consumer Rights and Interests, merchants must bear punitive compensation of "refund plus three times the price." AI has never been a merchant's immunity card, still less a cloak of invisibility for fraud. Whoever tries to use AI as a shield must pay for false advertising.

The Measures for Labeling Artificial Intelligence-Generated Synthetic Content have long made clear that AI-generated images, text, and videos should carry clear and perceptible labels; hiding them without labeling, to the point of misleading consumers, infringes the right to know. Platforms also bear verification obligations: for content detected as having synthetic traces but not declared as such, they should promptly add labels and warnings, and serve well as the "gatekeepers" of consumer trust.

AI models "conquering" Double 11 is no reason to give up eating for fear of choking. Tools themselves have no good or evil; responsibility lies with those who use them. By standardizing and properly using AI and holding the bottom line of not defrauding consumers, AI models can emerge from the public opinion vortex of being hard to tell real from fake, shed the negative label of "fraud tool," truly take root in the real economy, serve consumers, and become trustworthy and useful digital helpers for the e-commerce industry.