Safe to Say the Robots on the Runway Didn’t Go Over Well

If you’re not careful, they’ll stick a robot on the runway when you aren’t looking. And that’s exactly what happened during the 2026 Vogue World Milano show. For the uninitiated, Vogue World is an annual, global, live-streamed fashion event and street spectacular created by Vogue magazine to celebrate fashion, local culture, and community causes. In its recent iterations, it’s largely become a spectacle serving as a opportune cash-grab moment, prime with marketing and sponsorship slots, with a fun splash of fashion and celebrity appearances that makes it all seem momentarily worthwhile.Arnold Jerocki//Getty ImagesBeyond the star-studded attendees, what really had the internet talking was the inclusion of robots on the runway. It was a real choice considering the theme of this year’s runway had to do with Italian craftsmanship. The takeaway pretty much everyone had, from the internet to certain members of the audience in attendance was: The robots are ready to take over everything, even something celebrating human craftsmanship. It is almost impossible to avoid artificial intelligence unless you actively make a daily effort to do it. From Google searches to ChatGPT and everything in between, it exists now in overwhelming numbers, which is why many people, and especially creatives (ahem, including fashion designers) feel rightfully frustrated. AI fatigue is here, so seeing one of the largest fashion brands include awkward looking robots on the runway, stiltedly hyping up the crowd in the same spot Miranda Priestly stood in the Devil Wears Prada 2 lamenting about AI taking over, feels incredibly flaccid and unimaginative. Especially since they weren’t even wearing clothes?After many fashion accounts posted cheeky videos of the robots, even showing notable designers like Muccia Prada and Alessandro Michele looking anything but amused by the technology, it had everyone wondering why it was featured. A quick look at this year’s Vogue World sponsors might clue us all in: eBay, Alo Yoga, Eli Lilly and Company (a pharmaceutical company selling GLP-1 medication, among others), and Meta Glasses. Additional support also came from FedEx and OpenAI.The dichotomy of beautiful archival fashion waltzing through the architectural beauty of Milan with these tiny—and (I can’t emphasize this enough) naked!—robots making their way through what has been years of human invention is a sign of the times we're living in. Creative spaces cannot survive without their benefactors. But when those Billionaire backers no longer see art and creation as something valued that should stay human, it becomes just another space to monetize and optimize, which is how we end up with viral moments like this.These silly robots, that only walked the runway for a few short moments (but stole the internet’s attention), didn’t add to the event. Time will only tell with what shifts are still on their way and where we go from here if fashion has to keep relying on tech companies to stay afloat.Aiyana Ishmael is the style editor at Cosmopolitan magazine. In her work, Aiyana focuses on the culture of fashion and how it intertwines and shapes the zeitgeist. She is an award-winning journalist from Miami, Florida, and a graduate of the historically Black university, Florida A&M. She is a 2024 Forbes 30 Under 30: Media honoree, and her debut romance novella PASSING GAME is set to release March of 2027 (831 Stories/Simon & Schuster).