I’m glad AI is coming for African fashion: the hollow hallucination of Google's African Met Gala

Is artificial intelligence a match for African intelligence? Google’s AI model, Gemini, released a social media campaign in May of this year where South African content creators imagined themselves at the Met Gala. Using generative AI, they were tasked to create couture looks inspired by African art, heritage and the dressed body in history. Looking at the results, which mostly amounted to a smorgasbord of stereotypical African fashion (kente, beadwork and “African colours” just smashed together without much connection to any craft reality), I had to wonder who this was for? With so much discourse around the underrepresentation, challenges and marginalisation of African fashion, whose fantasies and ideals are being met here? Become a Patreon: https://patreon.com/khensani?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/okbaddiek References: “How thousands of ‘overworked, underpaid’ humans train Google’s AI to seem smart” by V. Bansal (2025) for The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/11/google-gemini-ai-training-humans “THE FUTURISM YOU WERE SOLD WAS A WEAPON” by Monika Bielskyte (2026) https://monikabielskyte.substack.com/p/the-futurism-you-were-sold-was-a “Welcome to the era of Relational Intelligence (SSIR), Relational Intelligence Surpasses Artificial Intelligence in Education and Workplace” by Hau, I.C. (2026) https://ssir.org/articles/entry/era-of-relational-inte