Vivian Wilson, the estranged daughter of Elon Musk, is the face of a new campaign for the Spanish fashion label Desigual. The campaign, titled 'Born to Disobey', is a pointed critique of artificial intelligence and its growing influence on the fashion industry.
Directed by the trio PSG—Yukihiro 'Sho' Shoda, Pau López, and Gerardo del Hierro—the campaign features Wilson, a 22-year-old transgender model and activist, interacting with a malfunctioning robot named DESI84. In one clip, she uses the robot as a golf tee, walks it on a leash, and attempts to teach it to say 'Desigual'. The robot fails at every task, leading Wilson to conclude: 'Some things aren't meant to be fixed.'
According to a press release, the campaign aims to 'send a clear message: the greatest rebellion is no longer about fighting against the system but about refusing to be part of it. When everything invites you to obey, the answer is attitude, irony and the freedom to be yourself.'
Wilson told People that taking a stand on AI was important to her 'because it takes jobs away from talented creatives while being detrimental for the environment.' She added: 'Art is emotion through expression. Since emotion is inherently human, AI takes away any underlying intention and replaces it with plagiarized colors and shapes.'
A personal message?
Beyond the anti-AI stance, the campaign is hard to read as anything other than a direct jab at Elon Musk. Wilson, born in 2004 to Musk and his first wife Justine Wilson, began her gender transition at 16 with parental consent. Musk later claimed he was 'tricked into signing documents', a claim Wilson has denied. On her 18th birthday, she won a court case to take her mother's maiden name, severing legal ties with her father.
Musk has publicly said his child is 'dead' and that she was 'infected by the woke mind virus'. In this context, lines like 'He was designed to obey. Not me' and 'Some things aren't meant to be fixed' resonate beyond AI, appearing as pointed critiques of her father's worldview and his own creations.
The robot DESI84, which is useless and malfunctioning, bears a striking resemblance to the Tesla Bot (Optimus) marketed by Musk's company. Whether intentional or not, the visual parallel is hard to ignore.
Wilson has not shied away from criticizing her father publicly. Last year, she commented on the controversy over Musk's gesture at Donald Trump's inauguration, which many interpreted as a Nazi salute. 'I'm just gonna say let's call a spade a fucking spade,' she wrote on Threads, 'Especially if there were two spades done in succession based on the reaction of the first spade.'
She also dismissed claims that the gesture could be explained by autism, sarcastically noting: 'I mean I have ADHD and this was CLEARLY just an accident that people happened to interpret to mean something other than just card suits.'
The campaign arrives as Europe debates the role of AI in fashion, with France recently imposing a levy on ultra-fast fashion items and the EU pushing for circular fashion initiatives. Wilson's stance adds a personal and provocative voice to that conversation.
