Aerie has partnered with Pamela Anderson to expand its pledge against AI-generated bodies in advertising — and challenge the rest of the industry to follow suit.
Aerie, the clothing brand owned by American Eagle Outfitters, has enlisted Pamela Anderson as the face of the next chapter of its “100% Aerie Real” campaign — a direct challenge to an industry that is moving rapidly toward artificial intelligence-generated imagery at the precise moment Aerie is moving just as deliberately in the opposite direction.
The partnership builds on a commitment the brand made in October 2025 to never use AI to create images of people or bodies in its campaigns. That pledge itself extended a promise Aerie first made in 2014 to stop retouching people and bodies in its advertising entirely. The new campaign, created by Shadow Creative Marketing and Communications and directed by Gemma Warren, is designed to take that message beyond Aerie’s existing audience and pressure the broader industry to reckon with what AI-generated imagery is doing to consumer trust.
The Ad Makes the Argument Visually
The campaign’s creative execution is deliberately pointed. The new spot contrasts a cold, AI-generated environment with the warmth of a real photo shoot. Anderson’s voice is heard in the background, prompting an AI system — asking it, with increasing futility, to bring authenticity and feeling to what it is producing. When it cannot, the artificial scene dissolves. The models come alive in a real, energetic environment.
The message is not subtle, and it is not meant to be.
“We’re getting the word across that you can’t prompt realness,” said Stacey McCormick, Aerie’s chief marketing officer.
Anderson, who rose to cultural prominence through the 1990s television series Baywatch and has since become known for embracing a stripped-back, unmediated public image, was a deliberate choice. She is, McCormick said, “a cultural force who has spent decades reclaiming and showing up as her authentic self. She stands for everything we stand for and stand up to.”
Also Read: Your Rebrand Is Failing. Have You Tried Listening?
It Is Already Working
The October pledge was not only a values statement — it was a commercial decision that has since paid off. Aerie, which McCormick acknowledged “was not top of mind for a lot of consumers” before the campaign, saw a double-digit increase in brand awareness from October through the end of 2025, with momentum continuing into the new year.
“We look at a moment like this to increase the visibility of our brand,” McCormick said. “We have great momentum behind us.”
The campaign will run across paid, owned, and earned social channels, with placements on YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, Disney, HBO, NBCU, Roku, and Samsung.
Where Aerie Draws the Line
Aerie is not positioning itself as opposed to artificial intelligence categorically. McCormick was precise about the distinction: the brand has no objection to using AI tools for logistics, planning, and content scaling. The line is drawn at using AI for bodies, faces, or any representation of lived human experience. “That will be made by real people,” she said.
Since October, the company has also committed to using real creators behind the scenes of its campaigns — a change that required, in McCormick’s words, significant internal work to establish new operating standards.
In its retail operations, Aerie is pursuing the same philosophy through different means. The brand opens 40 to 50 new stores per year, treating them as community and event spaces rather than purely transactional environments. It’s Aerie Real Foundation extends the campaign’s values into a longer-term commitment to building confidence in women and girls.
Also Read: Marketing That Predicts, Not Reacts
A Growing Industry Movement
Aerie is not alone. Equinox and Almond Breeze have both mounted campaigns this year that explicitly call out AI-generated content and position authenticity as a competitive differentiator. The anxiety driving these moves is real and measurable — consumers are increasingly attuned to the difference between genuine and generated, and a growing number of brands are concluding that the cost of AI-generated imagery is not just ethical but commercial.
McCormick said she hopes the movement grows.
“We’re not resisting AI in the world, but we are redefining value in an AI world,” she said. “In this industry where everything can be generated, real becomes rare and unique — and that becomes powerful and different.”
