Zalando Shuts Berlin Studios as Fashion Brands Replace Shoots With AI

Zalando, Europe's largest online fashion retailer, has closed both of its photo studios in Berlin, eliminating 340 jobs and replacing product imagery with AI-generated pictures. The move, reported by Reuters after a review of dozens of confidential photo shoot contracts, marks the most concrete evidence yet that generative AI is dismantling the commercial photography economy in fashion e-commerce.

The studio closures are not an isolated case. About You, another German fashion brand, has launched Scayle Studios, a digital imagery studio built on AI-generated models. The company says the operation cuts production costs by 90 percent compared with traditional shoots.

Julian Jansen, vice president of marketing at About You, told Reuters: "We are saving so much money. You've always had this super fast world of ecommerce, and this super slow traditional world of photo shoots, it didn't fit together in any way — and now with AI, it's a completely different scale."

His framing identifies the mechanism behind the shift. E-commerce catalogs turn over at weekly or daily speed, while traditional shoots require bookings, crews, locations and post-production measured in weeks. AI generation collapses that timeline, and the cost difference is large enough to eliminate the studio layer entirely.

What are brands demanding from the models still hired?

Reuters reviewed confidential contracts and casting documents from Calvin Klein, Diesel and L'Oreal. According to the report, these agreements effectively grant brands permission to reuse a model's likeness repeatedly for any purpose, or to use only the model's body and replace the head with AI editing tools.

A draft contract from Calvin Klein, seen by Reuters, stated that the fashion house "may use reasonably unrecognizable images of Model (no identifying features such as Model's face, scars, tattoos or otherwise) to train and fine tune AI tools for learning general model attributes." The contract offered no extra remuneration for that use.

A Diesel casting sheet went further. It asked models to agree to "alteration or reconstruction of facial features and body proportions," along with "swapping of faces among the participating models" and "superimposition of the Participant's face onto another person's body."

Diesel told Reuters that the release covered only one specific campaign and does not represent a typical contract. Reale Actives, a brand that also sought rights to create digital clones of models, denied ever using AI to replicate a model — an odd position for a company whose tagline reads "Reale you is perfect you."

Does the model get paid for the clone?

In the contract language Reuters described, no. The rights to reuse, recombine and retrain on a model's image are folded into the standard shoot fee. Some models are being replaced outright by AI-generated alternatives, and others have had their likeness replicated without compensation. A handful of brands skip human source material entirely and rely on fully synthetic models, removing the licensing question at the root.

For working photographers, the pattern is the same one that hit stock imagery after synthetic content entered licensing catalogs: the client stops commissioning the original production once the derived asset becomes cheap and unrestricted.

How large is the damage to studio employment?

The Zalando closures cost 340 jobs, though the company says some employees were transferred to other roles. Reuters did not specify how many workers moved versus how many left the company. That distinction matters for anyone tracking whether AI adoption redistributes studio labor or simply deletes it.

The 340 figure covers two studios in one city at one retailer. Applied across the European e-commerce sector, where every major player maintains or contracts catalog production, the addressable reduction in studio work is substantial.

What should photographers and studio operators take from this?

The economics, not the aesthetics, are driving the change. A 90 percent production cost reduction, as claimed by About You's Scayle Studios, does not leave room for a traditional shoot budget at a price-sensitive e-commerce brand. Catalog and e-commerce work — once steady commercial volume for studios — is the segment most exposed.

Model releases now function as AI training licenses. Photographers who negotiate on behalf of shoots, and models reviewing contracts, should read likeness clauses for language covering training, fine-tuning, face swapping and unrestricted reuse, and price those rights separately rather than bundling them into the session fee.

The claims deserve scrutiny on both sides. Diesel calls its casting sheet atypical; Reale Actives denies using AI replication at all. Meanwhile, brands tout savings while studio workers count layoffs. Reuters' contract review is the documented record; company assurances about scope are, so far, statements without published evidence.

Expect the next wave of contract disputes to center on whether a model's AI-derived likeness belongs to the model or to whoever paid for the original shoot.