AI in Fashion

There’s a lot of hype around AI, so I decided to ask one (Google Bard) how it thought it could help the fashion industry.  Below is its unedited response:

“AI can be used in fashion businesses in a variety of ways, including:

• Designing clothes: AI can be used to design clothes that are both stylish and comfortable. For example, AI can be used to create patterns that are flattering for different body types.
• Personalizing clothing: AI can be used to personalize clothing for individual customers. For example, AI can be used to recommend clothes that match a customer's style or body type.
• Creating virtual try-ons: AI can be used to create virtual try-ons, which allow customers to see how clothes will look on them before they buy them. This can help to reduce the number of returns and increase sales.
• Predicting trends: AI can be used to predict trends in fashion. This information can be used to develop new products and marketing campaigns.
• Managing supply chains: AI can be used to manage supply chains more efficiently. This can help to reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction.
• Fraud detection: AI can be used to detect fraud in the fashion industry. This can help to protect businesses from losses.
• Customer service: AI can be used to provide customer service. For example, AI can be used to answer customer questions or resolve issues.

Overall, AI can be a valuable tool for fashion businesses. It can be used to improve the design, production, and marketing of clothing. It can also be used to provide better customer service”.

It’s quite an interesting response, and seems to demonstrate a good understanding of the question and a coherent and wide-ranging answer.  But just like a candidate on “the Apprentice”, the AI seems to have an inflated view of its capabilities.  Taking the first point, Designing Clothes, I asked Bard for a shirt pattern, but not being graphic-capable it gave me a series of text instructions for producing a pattern, rather underwhelming.  Microsoft’s Bing/DALL-E is an image generator, but could only give me pictures of men’s shirts.  However there is no doubt that AI Image generators can be an excellent source of graphics and patterns for fabrics and prints, showing considerable creativity.

It’s a similar tale of over-promising and under-delivery in most of the other bullet points. However it is early days for AI and ignoring the hype and its own inflated views of its abilities, there is little doubt most its responses will be fulfilled in time. A year ago it wasn’t even possible to ask an AI this question, we’ve already come a long way.

The image accompanying this blog post was generated by Bing/DALL-E, using “robots on the catwalk” as an image request.