In our latest video interview, three of Virgil Abloh’s former collaborators sit down with us to discuss artificial intelligence, creativity, and what it means to maintain one's soul in an era of acceleration. What begins as a conversation about AI tools quickly unravels into something more human: doubt, intuition, heritage, and the responsibility of creating work that lasts.
Admitting their first encounter with AI was rejection. The idea of machine-made lookbooks felt invasive. But curiosity turned into long nights of prompting, failing, and refining, until a realization emerged: anyone can create something that resembles AI. The real challenge is creating something that doesn’t. Instead of leaning on stock imagery or recycled aesthetics, they train AI with their own archives—photographs, textures, childhood references, fragments of travel. The outputs aren’t finished works but moodboards, visual seeds that guide shoots and campaigns. The intention is simple: the final image should reflect the soul, not the algorithm.
“AI doesn’t make my style. It reveals it.”
Despite the myth of efficiency, AI hasn’t made the work easier. If anything, it multiplies the labor. Dozens of variants, endless rejection, constant fine-tuning. But what it does offer is clarity. Those nagging “what ifs” that once lived only in the mind can now be tested, tried, and discarded. The tool reduces doubt. Conviction sharpens. The conversation turns serious when Miyazaki’s warning comes up—that AI risks robbing us of part of our dreaming. The fear isn’t machines replacing artists, but artists forgetting how to imagine without machines. The answer, they remind us, is lived experience. Touch, travel, silence. Smells, colors, accidents. The textures AI cannot fake. These become the guardians of authenticity in a landscape obsessed with speed.
Virgil’s spirit runs through the discussion, not as nostalgia but as responsibility. Just as he treated heritage as raw material for the future, his collaborators stress the importance of curating what we feed into AI. Cultural memory, overlooked traditions, the weight of lineage—these must be protected. Soul property, they call it. More than intellectual property. Something deeper. They see a future where AI expands into 3D, where entire worlds can be summoned instantly. But they also see the danger of homogeneity, of everything becoming too polished, too fast. Still, there’s faith that creativity will always push through—the plant breaking through concrete. The real question is whether we’ll nurture it, or cover it over.
This conversation isn’t just about artificial intelligence. It’s about the human responsibility to create work that holds weight, that carries memory, that risks honesty. In a world of acceleration, maybe that’s the most radical act left. Check out the full conversation on our YouTube!
