Pamela Anderson wants to distance herself from fashion.
The 58-year-old actress and natural beauty advocate is the face of Aerie’s new anti-AI campaign. Anderson appears untouched and without makeup, as the American Eagle-owned brand furthers its pledge to never use AI-generated bodies or people in its marketing.
In the video, Anderson reads prompts to the AI program and tries to convince it to produce something real. “Generate a female model” “Make her happier, more fun” “Add two more models. They should all look…unique” “Make them feel…real”.
When the show is unavailable, the scene shifts to the real Aerie set, where Anderson greets a group of models, poses for photos with them, and laughs and banters. “You can’t encourage this,” she says.
“[AI images]are very disturbing, so I thought it was a clever way to get attention,” Anderson told Vogue Business. “As a woman, as a consumer, as a mother, I always think: What’s going on? What’s the difference between AI and the real thing? How do we know? I’ve already been disappointed when I look at fashion magazines and see retouched celebrities and models, but this is on another level.”
The campaign builds on Aerie’s October 2025 pledge to ban AI-generated images, which is an extension of its 2014 pledge to stop body retouching in advertising. Since launching the initiative, the brand has seen double-digit growth in brand awareness and a 23% increase in sales in the fourth quarter of 2025, Aerie CMO Stacey McCormick told Adweek.
The campaign comes as AI-generated images become increasingly common across the fashion industry. Brands like Prada, Gucci and Valentino have all incorporated AI visuals in recent campaigns, sparking widespread criticism online, while H&M is rolling out “digital twins” of real models.
European retailer Zalando reported that 70% of its editorial images in the second half of 2024 were generated by AI.
Anderson, who is also the founder of skincare brand Sonsie, has been one of Hollywood’s most vocal advocates for natural beauty ever since her no-makeup look at Paris Fashion Week in 2023 made headlines.
The decision to embrace her appearance was part of a big decision for Anderson, who described herself as an “analog girl” who left Hollywood for Vancouver Island a few years ago to work on herself.
“I wouldn’t mind picking one for every woman,” she told Vogue. “I don’t do any retouching or filtering. It’s just the way it is, and it’s very freeing. It’s much more interesting when it looks completely imperfect.”
