Coeva Vintage's Stance on AI

As artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in how businesses create, communicate and sell, we want to be clear about Coeva Vintage's stance on AI and if/how we choose to use it.

Our Boundaries

This is not an anti-technology manifesto, nor is it a claim that AI has no useful applications.
It's the boundaries we are choosing for Coeva Vintage and AI.

The world (and how businesses create and communicate) has changed so much since we founded Coeva Vintage in 2018. We curate items that were imagined, designed, constructed, created, chosen, worn, altered, loved and preserved by humans. Therefore each vintage garment is a small piece of human history, shaped by the hands and tools that made it, the background or culture it came from, and the life it led before it reached us. All of which makes vintage garments and sustainable style so important to us.

We may use AI selectively to organize information, question our thinking, or help us work through early-stage ideas and language. It will not replace our judgement, research, creative point of view, or accountability for the products we offer.

We will not use it just because it's available. We consider whether the purpose justifies the resources involved and whether a more human or less resource-intensive approach would serve us better.

Our position on AI isn't an abstract response to a new technology, but comes from knowing how much heart, thought, skill, experimentation, persistence, and lived experience can be behind a finished design, piece of clothing, or a creative work. 

Human Discernment

Every garment we offer is selected, curated, and examined by a person. Each product description and listing information is written and reviewed by a person. If we get something wrong, the responsibility is ours. When we have not been able to verify a garment’s history, we won't fill in the gaps with a more marketable story. “We don’t know” is more honest and we'd rather admit what we do not know than claim certainty. 

Technology can be useful but usefulness doesn't make it harmless or appropriate for every purpose. AI can generate language, information, code, and imagery at extraordinary speed, but can also produce something that seems polished and convincing without it being accurate, ethical or true. Convenience and faster growth doesn't always mean better despite what capitalism may want us to believe. The (fast) fashion industry is a great example of this. 

AI may help us organize research, or work through early ideas. It is a tool we may occasionally consult. AI does not authenticate our garments. It does not establish provenance, determine condition, assign value or make our final decisions about dating and attribution. Those decisions require examining the physical garment and its labels, materials, construction, wear and alterations; alongside credible reference materials if available, paired with decades of human experience handling vintage.

Our Images

The garment you see in a Coeva Vintage listing is the garment available for purchase. We do not use AI-generated product photographs, virtual models, or fabricated settings. We don’t digitally remove damage, change a garment’s proportions, invent missing or unknown details, or try to make an item appear to be in better condition than it is.

We may crop or straighten a photograph and make basic corrections to exposure or colour so that the image represents the actual garment as accurately as possible. Those adjustments will never be used to disguise condition issues or materially alter what you can expect to receive, and if adjustments are made to the exposure this is noted in the listing details.

Occasionally, a vintage piece includes wear, repairs, fading or other imperfections. We examine and disclose those details so you can make an informed decision about purchasing.

Creativity

Coeva Vintage was founded by a creative, coach and curator who has spent over four decades creating, as well as collaborating with and coaching other creatives.  So much creative labour is invisible. A final photograph, garment, artwork or paragraph doesn't show the years spent developing, experimenting, learning a craft, finding a voice, taking risks, making mistakes, and learning from them.

Creativity isn't just the ability to produce an intriguing final result. It’s informed by memory, culture, relationships, curiosity, emotion, experience and a point of view that belongs to a person. We firmly believe that generating AI content is not the same thing as participating in a creative practice. 

We share the concerns of artists, photographers, writers, designers and other creatives whose work has been used to develop commercial AI systems without their meaningful knowledge, consent, credit or compensation. A person’s body of work should not be treated as an anonymous supply of raw material from which to manufacture a cheaper substitute for their involvement.

Coeva Vintage will not ask generative AI to imitate the recognizable work or style of a particular creative. We will not use it to invent, imitate, deceive or misrepresent. Creative people are entitled to agency over how their work is used, as well as meaningful recognition and compensation when someone else profits from it. As we invite people to 'be and wear a work of art', we also have a responsibility to respect the human imagination, creativity, investment, and labour that make that possible.

Environmental Aspects 

Our concerns about AI are not limited to what it produces. We also consider what its use consumes. The environmental cost of an individual use is difficult for an ordinary person or small business to comprehend. It varies between systems, and technology companies do not provide the information needed to make a clear comparison. AI use depend on data centres, electricity, water usage, manufactured hardware, and the extraction of the materials needed to build and maintain that infrastructure. 

Sustainability means making different choices e.g. selling an existing garment instead of producing a new one. It also means querying unnecessary production, resisting the trend of disposability, and taking the time to consider the choices we make. We refuse to use AI to produce endless variations of disposable content, fill space or feed an algorithm. 

We don't claim environmental or technological purity. Coeva Vintage is an online business which means our work involves digital platforms, photography, packaging, and transportation, all of which use resources. What we can control is whether we deliberately use AI and generative AI. AI is also being embedded in search engines, ecommerce platforms and everyday software, sometimes without businesses or customers being able to identify or disable it.

Technology will continue to change. Our commitment to human creativity, honest representation, environmental responsibility and accountability will not.