Rotterdam studio The Phoney Club is redrawing the rules for AI-made worlds

The Phoney Club, based in Rotterdam, is a studio with an intriguing perspective befitting its name. Among the branding, motion, strategy and art direction that makes up its output, the Dutch creative agency focuses on what’s not real and the tension that can create. “A phoney thing makes you look twice, it unsettles,” the studio explains. “And in that moment of doubt – that half-second where you’re not quite sure – perception becomes an active act. You’re no longer just seeing; you’re deciding.” Challenging perceptions and expectations – concerning the likes of beauty, interaction and individuality – The Phoney Club takes the questions around reality and plays with them. With the introduction of generative AI, the studio saw the technology as a new toolkit to attack this shared creative curiosity. 

This practice manifests in a number of ways – varying from project to project – with one such example being The Phoney Club’s campaign for Ajen Botanical Body Care. Built around an AI twin of model Soesja Leugs, the product shots look like they have been filtered through a Dutch countryside daydream – flat landscapes, squelchy moss and bubbles are paired with pristine packaging, clean graphics and, of course, an AI model. Serving as hired, licensed generative counterparts to real models, the studio places said digital doppelgängers into wholly fictional worlds, albeit without retouching or altering the model’s likeness in any way. This, for The Phoney Club, is an ethical concern rather than an aesthetic one, and makes up part of the studio’s own rulebook in navigating uncharted territory. “We don’t alter these faces or retouch their imperfections,” says the studio. “Wrinkles, shadows and marks are all welcome additions to our universe [...] real imperfection becomes not just an aesthetic choice but an ethical one, proof that somewhere behind the image, a real person exists.”

The unknown is seemingly what interests The Phoney Club, and where it likes to hang its hat, while equally holding itself responsible in defining the standards it sets. “Authenticity is one thing AI cannot generate, it has to be brought in from the outside.” All of these inquiries and intrigues came to a head via The Phoney Edit, the studio’s art direction and image creation service. The hybrid approach combines photography and AI production, allowing The Phoney Club to unleash its art direction on a brand without the restrictions of location or budget. 

Similarly, The Phoney Club put its philosophy into practice with The Phoneyverse, a self-initiated project which saw friends, clients and collaborators interact with a custom tool the studio built – “trading the room they were standing in for a world we’d built from scratch”. The programme allowed guests to travel between three artificial dimensions that the studio has crafted in response to the ever-emptying (and empty) digital worlds that we voluntarily enter every day. Epitomising The Phoney Club’s perspective, the resulting virtual reality is proudly technologically led, but speaks to its idealistic potential – in opposition to the ostensibly endless echo chambers of bots and generative posts.