It has to be noticed that, especially in this fast-paced environment, trying on clothes in the mall has wasted much time in daily life. However, if people want to find the fashionable and suitable clothes for themselves, they have to choose this way. Although there are a number of persons would like to choose online shopping, which they can decide whether the clothes fit them or not, according to the beautiful images, it would still cause a lot of returns and exchanges online.
Therefore, have you ever thought that, in the future, people can use artificial intelligence (AI) technology to see the effect of different clothes on the body at home? By the combination of virtual imaging and AI technology, that situation can be achieved, although it sounds a little hard to imagine. Moreover, in the fashion field, more and more companies are starting to combine AI technology to form a variety of creative technologies.
According to reports of the BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2024 Survey of global fashion，it is 73% of respondents that said AI will be an essential priority for their businesses in 2024.(BOF TEAM, 2023) Hence, AI is absolutely important for companies, let's take a look at the definition of AI. It refers to, on the basis of a series of input data, machine learning algorithms, in order to create some original content. Up to now, artificial intelligence is widely used in various fields, even in creative fields, which were thought to be unique to humans. (Cem, 2024) There is no doubt that AI is playing an increasingly important role in human life.
According to report that other fashion brands have begun to use AI to create some creative project, like Ganni, Spring/Summer 2024. (BOF TEAM, 2023) Therefore, what are the benefits of using AI?
In the past, artist’s creativity has to be limited by the limitation in real life. However, AI can break that situation, even blending different forms of creativity. (Cem, 2024)
Figure 1 Adding modifier “by Magritte” dramatically changes the entire character of the prompt.
One reason AI is important in companies is to process data instead of humans. There are a variety of different kinds of unstructured data in mass-market fashion and luxury brands, which can be analyzed faster by AI. (Holger, Theodora, Roger, Kimberly, 2023) In order to improve the efficiency of the design process, an intelligent platform, which is powered by generative, has been invented. As a result of that, creative designers and their teams could input sketches and desired details, like fabrics, color palettes, and patterns, into it to make personalized design more convenient and flexible. In order to fasten their processes, there are some fashion designers even already using AI to spark new ideas without producing expensive samples.
Figure 2 Image of a black-white sketch turned into photo-like color image by pix2pix
There are many companies, which are developing AI technology, believing that AI can reduce design time, even like AiDA said, a dozen fashion templates within 10 seconds. ‘the technology can reduce manual tasks that take days to mere hours or even seconds’ (BOF TEAM, 2023) As a result of that, there is no surprise that AI is very essential in industry.
However, it can not be ignored that the problems behind the rapid development and use of artificial intelligence. First of all, how to protect intellectual property rights is an issue when artificial intelligence is developed quickly. (Holger, Theodora, Roger, Kimberly, 2023) The creative work generated by artificial intelligence, because of the particularity of the process in which it was created, is difficult to define its intellectual property ownership issues. The question of how designers can prevent infringement of others' intellectual property rights in the process of use, or prevent others from infringing their own intellectual property rights, is still worth discussing. Perhaps the future development of AI will give us an answer.
Reference
BOF TEAM (2023) The Year Ahead: How Gen AI Is Reshaping Fashion’s Creativity, BOF, 18 December
Cem D (2024) Generative AI Fashion Industry: Use Cases & Examples in 2024, AI Multiple, 3 January
Holger H, Theodora K, Roger ,Kimberly T (2023) Generative AI: Unlocking the future of fashion, McKinsey & Company, 8 March
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