Nick Knight Is Building His Own AI

**Imran Amed** (0:04)
Hi, this is Imran Amed, Founder and CEO of The Business of Fashion. Welcome to The BoF Podcast. It's Friday, August 21st.
I've been interviewing Nick Knight for more than 15 years. This is our fourth in-depth sit-down interview, and at this stage, it's becoming something closer to a running conversation about how technology is reshaping fashion.
This time around, I wanted to know where Nick is focusing his energy now. It turns out, he is building his own AI datasets from scratch, photographing a model over and over, so the machine sees the world only through his references, and never scrapes the Internet for somebody else's. He takes his own still image and asks the AI to make it move, producing something that is neither a photograph, nor a film. I also asked him for the advice he'd give to young image makers starting out today, in the age of AI.

**Nick Knight** (1:07)
Well, drop the past.
Stop trying to be a 20th century image maker or photographer. Stop trying to work for magazines. Stop trying to pretend that they still have some relevance. Stop trying to look backwards, look forwards with enthusiasm. If you can compare, rather badly, the AI revolution to the industrial revolution, this is like sitting in, standing in a field, looking at the first kind of locomotive going by, saying, so what do you advise somebody in the future? It's like, we don't know what's coming. It's changing so fast.

**Imran Amed** (1:35)
This week on The BoF Podcast, Nick and I get into what happened to the metaverse, how Nick believes AI is creating an entirely new medium, somewhere between photography and film, and what fulfillment really means to one of fashion's defining image makers. Here's Nick Knight on The BoF Podcast.
Nick Knight.

**Nick Knight** (2:00)
Hello.

**Imran Amed** (2:00)
How are you?

**Nick Knight** (2:01)
Yeah, good. Thank you. How are you?

**Imran Amed** (2:03)
Good. Welcome to The BoF Podcast. My pleasure. Actually, I should say, I feel welcome to your-

**Nick Knight** (2:10)
Your podcast in my studio.

**Imran Amed** (2:11)
Yeah, my podcast in your studio. And luckily, it's a beautiful summer's day.

**Nick Knight** (2:18)
It is. We've had a few of them this summer. Yeah.

**Imran Amed** (2:22)
I think it's been like six weeks of nice days at this stage. Yeah. So, I was looking back, this is our fourth sit-down interview.

**Nick Knight** (2:33)
Is it?

**Imran Amed** (2:35)
Our first one was in 2010

**Nick Knight** (2:37)
Yeah.

**Imran Amed** (2:37)
Livestreamed from The Hospital Club.

**Nick Knight** (2:39)
Do you remember that one? Yeah, Marcus Vernahead filmed it.

**Imran Amed** (2:42)
Exactly. Then we did one in 2018
Right. For The BoF Podcast. Then we did another one in 2022

**Nick Knight** (2:51)
Right.

**Imran Amed** (2:51)
Also for The BoF Podcast. So, this is now my fourth sit-down in-depth chat with you.

**Nick Knight** (2:58)
Excellent. Well, how nice. You want to come back and ask more questions.

**Imran Amed** (3:01)
Well, you know what? It feels like what this is becoming is an extended conversation now over the course of 15 or so years about how technology is changing fashion.

**Nick Knight** (3:17)
Yeah.

**Imran Amed** (3:18)
And that technological change and evolution is only accelerating.

**Nick Knight** (3:26)
Yeah.

**Imran Amed** (3:27)
So, rather than go back through your early career, which I normally do on this podcast, we've done that before. So, if anyone's...

**Nick Knight** (3:36)
See past episodes.

**Imran Amed** (3:37)
Exactly. If anyone's listening or watching and they want the history of this now legendary photographer, then you should watch parts 1, 2 and 3
But I want to dive right in to everything that's happening. The last time you and I sat down, it was just as at the time that the metaverse was this word that everyone was talking about. A very famous technology company from Silicon Valley actually changed its name to link itself permanently, it seems to the metaverse. And at the time, you were quite bullish about it. You were talking about perhaps there could be a time when we wouldn't even need physical fashion shows anymore. But the metaverse has kind of drifted away. Like, what do you make of what happened to the metaverse?

**Nick Knight** (4:34)
I don't think it's necessarily drifted away. I think the term's been some degree canceled because it had too many bad connotations. I don't think it helped that Mr. Zuckerberg named his platform after it. I think that put off a sway of the people.
So, I think it's still there. NFTs are still going. Avatars are still happening. There's a virtual world all around us, etc. So, none of that has gone away.