AI advertising slop has become impossible to ignore, and Skechers is once again the poster child for why brands should reconsider their generative AI strategy. The sneaker company’s newest campaign features a blonde girl squatting on a lantern-lined street wearing Skechers ‘Uno’ sneakers, rendered in what critics describe as a generic “faux-sketch style” with an “Instagram face” that screams artificial.
Key Takeaways
- Skechers’ latest AI ad shows obvious visual inconsistencies, including awkward anatomy and perspective errors that human illustrators would catch.
- This marks the brand’s second major AI advertising controversy in recent months, following a Vogue campaign backlash.
- Design professionals on Reddit called the ad “tacky, unprofessional dross,” questioning why the brand avoids hiring human illustrators.
- The broader trend reveals a concerning pattern: AI advertising slop is becoming normalized despite consistent public rejection.
- Vogue and other publications face accusations of publishing AI ads with increasing frequency, signaling industry-wide standards erosion.
Why Skechers’ AI advertising slop is drawing ridicule
The latest Skechers campaign is technically incompetent in ways that make its use of AI feel like a deliberate insult to design standards. Design professionals on r/graphic_design didn’t hold back: “The weird folds and shapes of the crotch area and perspective is wild,” one critic noted, while another called it “tacky, unprofessional dross” that deserves ridicule from every design publication. The determination to avoid hiring a human illustrator—when the result looks this rough—is what stings most. These aren’t subtle flaws that only trained eyes catch. The anatomy is broken, the perspective is nonsensical, and the overall execution feels rushed and cheap.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that Skechers clearly has budget for advertising. They’re placing campaigns in major publications. Yet they’re choosing to spend that money on generative AI tools that produce visibly inferior work. It’s not cost-cutting in the traditional sense—it’s cost-cutting wrapped in the language of innovation, which somehow makes it worse.
Skechers’ second AI advertising controversy in months
This isn’t Skechers’ first stumble with AI advertising slop. The brand previously generated backlash for a double-page spread in Vogue’s December issue, guest-edited by Marc Jacobs, which featured oddly placed sneakers rendered with the telltale visual hallmarks of generative AI. TikTok creator @polishlaurapalmer detected the AI immediately in a video highlighting the unusual features. Her initial reaction was “kind of cool,” but seconds later: “I look at the drawing for two more seconds, and I’m like oh that’s AI!”. That’s the problem in a nutshell. The AI quality is so obviously inferior that it takes mere seconds for consumers to clock it as fake.
What’s alarming is the pattern. Two major campaigns in quick succession suggest this isn’t a one-off experiment—it’s becoming Skechers’ default marketing strategy. And if Skechers is doing it, how many other brands are quietly rolling out AI advertising slop while the industry watches and debates whether this is acceptable?
The broader industry trend of AI advertising slop
Skechers isn’t alone. Vogue has faced accusations of publishing additional AI ads recently, indicating what critics describe as a “concerning state of flux” in publishing standards. The Sydney Sweeney campaign, which drew controversy for its “sexy slop” aesthetic, offers another data point in this troubling trend—one store reportedly saw foot traffic drop 9% following the ad. These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re symptoms of an industry in transition, where cost and speed are winning out over craft and quality.
The question isn’t whether brands will continue experimenting with AI advertising slop—they clearly will. The real question is whether consumers and design professionals will keep calling it out loudly enough to matter. Right now, the backlash exists primarily in design communities and social media. But if major publications like Vogue keep normalizing AI ads, and brands like Skechers keep deploying them despite public criticism, the threshold for what counts as “acceptable” advertising will shift downward by default.
Should brands be using AI for advertising at all?
The answer from design professionals is a resounding no—at least not at this quality level. When a brand has the budget to place ads in Vogue and major campaigns, there’s no legitimate reason to use visibly broken AI imagery. The cost argument doesn’t hold up. Neither does the speed argument, because the backlash and reputation damage take far longer to recover from than hiring a human illustrator would have taken in the first place.
What Skechers and other brands seem to be missing is that AI advertising slop isn’t just aesthetically bad—it’s insulting to the audience. It signals that the brand doesn’t care enough to do the work properly. In a crowded market where trust and brand perception matter enormously, that’s a dangerous message to send.
Is Skechers planning to stop using AI in advertising?
There’s no public statement from Skechers indicating a shift away from AI advertising slop. The brand has not addressed the backlash from either the Vogue campaign or the latest sneaker ad. Silence on the issue suggests the campaigns will continue until either consumer backlash becomes severe enough to force a change, or the brand internally decides the reputational cost outweighs the perceived savings.
What makes AI-generated ads so obviously fake?
AI advertising slop has consistent visual tells: anatomical errors, perspective inconsistencies, weird fabric folds, and a generic “Instagram face” quality that reads as artificial immediately. These aren’t subtle flaws. They’re the kind of mistakes that human illustrators learn to avoid in their first year of professional work. The technology simply isn’t there yet—and may never be—to produce advertising-quality imagery at scale without human oversight and refinement.
Skechers’ latest campaign proves that brands rushing to deploy AI without quality control are making a calculated bet: that speed and cost savings matter more than brand reputation. So far, the design community’s verdict is clear. The question now is whether enough consumers agree to make it matter.
Edited by the All Things Geek team.
Source: Creativebloq
