In October 2025, Aerie made a promise: It will never use AI-generated people or bodies in its marketing, point blank period. Six months later, it’s staying true to the commitment by casting the realest of the real, Pamela Anderson, in its latest campaign.
“[AI will] never replace human beings,” an Aerie-clad Anderson tells me over Zoom, minutes after coming in from her garden. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was fresh from her “100% Aerie Real” photoshoot, in a crisp, matching white set.
“When I saw the clothes, I was like, ‘That looks like my closet,'” she says. She loves “fancy things” on occasion, but in the end she just wants to feel like herself—a genre Aerie is all but synonymous with.
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Being “approachable and accessible” is what initially drew Anderson to Aerie. “I thought [the campaign was] a way to kind of talk to a younger audience, their audience.” But she stayed for the even more relatable angst toward AI, and its impact on fashion and beauty standards.
Pamela Anderson was all smiles—in a white tee, ruffle maxi skirt, and rain boots—on the springy Aerie set.
(Image credit: Adrian Martin)
“This is something that’s very unsettling to me—I always get duped by AI,” Anderson says, reflecting on the times her sons pointed out an image was created by an AI generator. But saying yes to Aerie’s spot is her way of making a conscious effort to keep it real.
The actor recognizes it’s easy to “spiral” or become “disoriented” by the ever-changing world of artificial intelligence—especially in fashion. For instance, Valentino and Gucci have been in hot water for using AI-generated images in Dec. 2025 and Feb. 2026 campaigns, respectively. What’s more, a Sept. 2025 report from Cornell University’s Worker Institute and Data & Society flagged the dangers models face at the hands of AI: “A single photoshoot can be used by client companies to capture images, body scans, and/or measurements that can then be easily manipulated with AI technologies, allowing companies to extract additional profit from this data without needing to re-hire or further compensate the model,” the research says.
For Anderson, a conversation-starting campaign is one more way of “staying in the fight” against Black Mirror-esque trends. “I want to stay provocative in our thinking—the more we talk about [AI] and the more we can think about it, we won’t get so controlled or seduced by it.”
Photos of Anderson on set captured her in a striped crewneck, too.
(Image credit: Adrian Martin)
It’s been three years since a bare-faced Anderson made waves at Paris Fashion Week, after decades of being known for extravagant, sometimes risqué red carpet looks. (Her leather bustier at the ’95 Cannes Film Festival, and her sheer, sequin pants at the ’99 MTV VMAs come to mind.) Then and now, she’s never let trends—in tech or otherwise—dictate what she thinks is beautiful. “We have to just create our own beauty standards,” Anderson says, remembering the different eras of her style. “I’ve been on this path where I’m not wearing makeup on red carpets or magazine covers, [but] I remember when I used to wear full glam.”
Next, Anderson styled Aerie’s linen in button-down form.
(Image credit: Adrian Martin)
Now, while it’s “so nice to feel free,” it was also a “process for me to realize I don’t look like I did when I was 20,” Anderson says. Embracing her minimalist side is her “small contribution” to encourage everyone to be themselves. She remembers a circa-1955 quote by E.E. Cummings: “To be nobody but yourself—in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”
These days, it’s more common than not to “compare yourself to AI-generated images or retouched images of celebrities,” she says. However, “it’s so freeing to just love yourself as you are.” Anderson even believes she looks “better to the naked eye than in pictures.”
Catch me in her exact minimalist look—down to the rain boots—this spring.
(Image credit: Adrian Martin)
Anderson relates to Aerie’s initiative “as an actress, as a mother, as a lover, as a human being,” a package AI couldn’t hope to completely replicate, even with a detailed prompt. She’s as genuine as ever in the clip, picking tulips, having tea, and playing chess, all dressed in Aerie’s elevated basics. “We all have such beautiful stories within each of us that none of us even know about each other,” she says. “AI could never put that kind of twinkle in your eye.”