Quite how the author, born in the small Hampshire village of Steventon on December 16, 1775, has managed to entice and enchant readers for more than two centuries in an ever-changing world remains a mystery.

Who would have thought that quotes from her six novels and pages of writings would adorn T-shirts and badges in the 21st century?

And not just in the UK, for the author who wrote of love and manners in the early 19th century has inspired fans around the world and her writings remain just as fresh and relevant today.

"Her novels are really concerned with wider moral issues," said Kathryn Sutherland, an Austen researcher and professor at the University of Oxford.

People feel Austen "is accessible, even though she is great literature, and also that you can read her books many times and each time you find something new in them", she added.

Sutherland also acknowledged it was fabulously filmed TV series and movies, with their brooding male leads, which had brought Austen wider audiences in the past decades.

The author of classic novels "Pride and Prejudice", "Emma" and "Sense and Sensibility" had only just become known when she died on July 18, 1817, aged 41.

But her six novels, wittily and sharply dissecting the lives of 19th century rural aristocracy, have since sold millions of copies, led to film adaptations and inspired many other productions, from "Bridget Jones" to "Bridgerton".

- Austen balls sold out -

Hundreds of people are expected to don period costume and stroll through the elegant Georgian streets of Bath in September for the annual 10-day Jane Austen Festival.

Austen lived for several years in the southwestern city, where she set her novels "Persuasion" and "Northanger Abbey".

A series of balls are planned, based around Austen's novels, with tickets already sold out for May and June despite a hefty £200 ($253) price tag.

With interest set to soar over the coming months, the BBC has kicked off the year with a new series -- "Miss Austen" -- devoted to the life of Jane's sister Cassandra, who burnt all her letters after her death.

She thus consigned to ashes some of Jane's deepest secrets, and to this day surprisingly little is known about the author.

Part of Austen's appeal rests on her depiction of a romanticised England with love affairs, tea and parties in the glorious surroundings of sprawling stately homes.

She also shone a harsh light on the status of women, for whom a good marriage was considered the only goal in a very restricted life.

The daughter of a clergyman, Austen herself remained unmarried despite a proposal, and spent most of her life with very little money.

- 'Women taking power' -

"Pride and Prejudice", with its main character Elizabeth Bennet who falls for the dashing Mr Darcy, is a firm fan favourite.

"Her female characters are very strong and vocal about their opinions and what they want," said Moa Aashacka, a 23-year-old Swedish student who was paying a Valentine's Day visit to the Jane Austen Centre in Bath with her boyfriend.

"They don't just accept marriage because they have to. They want to marry someone they actually like and love and who they feel respects them."

She added that Austen's novels were "more than romance... It's also about women taking power."

Tour guide Lauren Falconer, who helps giggling visitors dress up in Regency-style fashions, said all of Austen's characters are "so relatable" that "everyone has their favourite".

Maria Letizia d'Annibale, an English literature teacher visiting from Italy, said her pupils loved reading Austen's novels.

"Her stories are captivating. Young students really like her, especially the girls," she told AFP.

Part of the resurgence in Austen's appeal can be traced back to a stunning 1995 BBC adaption of "Pride and Prejudice", starring Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, and director Ang Lee's Oscar-winning adaption of "Sense and Sensibility", starring Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant.

Professor Sutherland credits these for propelling Austen "into a different level of popularity".

"In Jane Austen's novels, the hero, the male lead is really a kind of background figure. He is a moral instructor for the heroine, but he's not particularly sexy. Whereas in the films, of course, he's very sexy," she said.

"I think this turns the films into something that the novels are not, which is more narrowly romantic."

To coincide with the author's 250th birthday, Sutherland is organising an exhibition in Oxford called "Dancing with Jane Austen" with costumes from the films and examples of her writings about balls.

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Fashion designers and retailers can book her digital double for photo shoots without her having to travel or physically be there, Gondora told AFP.

It is a solution that "saves time", said the model, who is also walking down in-person runways at London Fashion Week, which runs until Monday evening.

In the fashion industry, artificial intelligence is already used by brands to create visual imagery for e-commerce websites and customised advertising campaigns at a lower cost.

While the technology opens up opportunities for some, critics fear AI will render many professionals, including models, make-up artists and photographers obsolete -- and could risk promoting an artificial standard of beauty.

- Customisable -

In one video, sculpted male models flex their muscles next to glamorous women, with a backdrop of marble pools and gilded mirrors.

But none of it is real: this Christmas campaign was entirely generated with the use of AI by studio Copy Lab for the Swedish underwear brand CDLP.

"We are a very small company: I cannot go to a house in Beverly Hills and shoot a campaign," said CDLP co-founder Christian Larson.

According to Larson, "real" photography has limitations.

"You have a film of this many pictures, the sun will set, and the light will disappear, and the budget will run out," Larson told AFP.

But with AI, "you dive into this black hole of endless options."

Preparing an ad campaign involving a photo shoot in the French Alps for ski eyewear would normally take several months to complete and could cost 35,000 euros ($37,000), but can be done virtually for just 500 euros in a few days, claimed Artem Kupriyanenko, citing a campaign done by his technology company Genera.

London and Lisbon-based Genera boasts a catalogue of 500 AI-generated models, all of which it claims to own the copyrights for.

The avatars can be customised by clients: "We can do any body shape, any gender, any ethnicity," assured Genera's creative head Keiron Birch, who said the practice was "super inclusive".

But AI tends to create a characteristic face type, which differs from generator to generator, said Carl-Axel Wahlstrom, co-founder of Stockholm-based Copy Lab, an "AI creative studio".

MidJourney, for example, has a tendency to generate models with thicker lips.

- Grey area -

Generative AI is trained on banks of images of models that are often retouched or which reflect a dominant "white, Western" aesthetic, explained Wahlstrom.

To obtain less generic results, he refines the descriptions or "prompts" he provides to the AI engines.

And for more "authentic" results, he also trains them on "imperfect" databases, where he has, for example, added images of "regular skin, like my skin, my girlfriend's skin, people that we know's skin."

Alexsandrah Gondora was critical of brands which use AI images created from databases found on the internet without paying the model, who she called the "middleman".

Models also face being duplicated virtually without their knowledge.

The "Fashion Workers Act", due to come into force this summer in New York, hopes to tackle this grey area by enabling models to control the use of AI to reproduce their likeness. But its practical application could prove complicated.

Gondora, however, is compensated for the work done by her digital alter ego and has the final say on how it is used.

This is also the case when she helps bring Shudu Gram, an AI-generated black supermodel, to life.

This virtual character created in 2017 and billed as the "world's first digital supermodel" is followed by 237,000 followers on Instagram.

Gondora and several other real-life black models lend their features to various shoots and projects for Shudu.

Last year, Shudu was a model for a 1960s-inspired collaboration by fashion label MAX&Co and London-based designer Richard Quinn.

When used ethically, AI does not deprive models from diverse backgrounds of opportunities, assured Gondora, who claimed that this technology has "opened certain doors" for her.

One of them is that her AI model is "timeless".

"There is no expiration for my AI... it's timeless. Somewhere out there in the world, my AI will always be young to me, even when I'm old."

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