Chanel CEO gets 'all-male team in suits' after asking ChatGPT for image of brand's senior team: 'Come on'

The incident illustrated AI’s often skewed assumptions about corporate culture.

During a visit to Microsoft’s Seattle headquarters in May, Chanel CEO Leena Nair and her leadership team engaged with tech companies to explore AI’s potential in the luxury sector. In an interview with Stanford Graduate School of Business’s “View From The Top,” Nair detailed her team’s exploration into how AI’s pervasive influence would intersect with Chanel’s values. “AI is everywhere,” she said. “And it’s going to be transformative in our world, so luxury has to engage with it, Chanel has to engage with it.”

However, while interacting with ChatGPT at Microsoft, Nair encountered a moment she described as “funny.” Requesting an image of Chanel’s senior team visiting Microsoft, the AI-generated result displayed an “all-male team in suits”—a stark contrast to Chanel’s diverse leadership. Nair, formerly the first female Chief HR Officer at Unilever, critiqued the portrayal: “This is Chanel. Yes, 76% of my organisation is women, 96% of my clients are women, female CEO.” She expressed her disappointment humorously, remarking, “This is what you’ve got to offer, ChatGPT? Come on.”

The incident illustrated AI’s often skewed assumptions about corporate culture. While the latest GPT-4 model of ChatGPT has shown significant advances in sounding human-like, Nair voiced concerns about the ethical direction of AI development, urging tech leaders to adopt a “humanistic” approach. “I constantly talk to my friends in tech, all the CEOs that you know, saying, come on, guys, you’ve gotta make sure that you’re integrating a humanistic way of thinking in AI.”

Chanel’s ongoing AI initiatives focus on balancing technological advancements with brand heritage, with Nair confirming that Chanel is in the process of becoming “AI-ready.” This includes setting up infrastructure systems, implementing data governance classifications, and conducting various experiments, including on-site productivity tools and chatbots on the Chanel website.

Despite the push for technology, Nair emphasised Chanel’s “relentless focus on human creators” and the need to maintain creative freedom, saying, “Ensuring that AI supports human creators and creation, rather than take away what they bring so skillfully and masterfully, is very much core to who we are at Chanel.”