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Fashion and AI. They're in their honeymoon phase. What will the fashion industry become with AI?
If you've been on YouTube recently, you might have seen 'By Balenciaga' AI generated videos depicting characters from popular franchises such as Star Wars and The Avengers, to Disney Princesses and Resident Evil.
The original video, titled Harry Potter by Balenciaga (demonflyingfox), is mesmerising. The 54 second video features characters from Harry Potter who are rather modelesque, tilting their heads as the camera pans towards their faces. These visuals are accompanied by an electronic track called "Lightvessel" by Thip Trong.
It feels like a real campaign video that a luxury fashion house would make.
How do these videos make you feel? Is it creepy?
When a 'robot’s' appearance becomes a nearly perfect human representation, but is still distinguishable from it, people react very negatively towards it. We feel somewhat repulsed, and maybe even disgust. This is referred to as the uncanny valley (Złotowski et al., 2015).
Balenciaga, if you didn't know already, is a Span- Wait, I mean a French luxury fashion house. At the end of 2022, they stirred up controversy by creating an insanely inappropriate campaign which you've probably already heard of. Balenciaga is owned by Kering, who also own fashion houses such as Bottega Veneta, Gucci, and Alexander McQueen.
Balenciaga's notable pieces throughout the years involve their:
Chunky Triple S trainers (or sneakers some may say);
Sock-like Speed trainers;
Whatever these are;
This;
This too;
And also (?)
The general public already believe that Balenciaga is a large player in driving digital fashion along with other brands not limited to Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Nike (Zou et al., 2022).
AI is short for artificial intelligence.
AI is defined as “the use of computational machinery to emulate capabilities inherent in humans, such as doing physical or mechanical tasks, thinking, and feeling” (Huang & Rust, 2021, p. 31).
ChatGPT is an AI chatbot that answers life's real important questions... Self driving cars use AI so you can do more important things than actually driving...? Alexa uses AI to listen to your secrets...
With the recent advancements in AI, it's important to understand how audiences react to these.
AI is highly likely to become commonplace in fashion.
As of March 2023, Levi's have shared that they are considering to use AI generated clothing models alongside real models in order to 'diversify' and allow their clothes to be seen on a multitude of body types, sizes, ages, and skin colours, rather than on one model only. And I thought there were 8 billion people on the planet...
Is double denim allowed though?
Recently, fashion retailer Revolve created an AI generated billboard ad because why not?
Metaverse fashion week is a thing because attending events in real life is just so last year.
There are talks of body scanners being developed that accurately assess clothing measurements reducing the need to return items.
Virtual try-on experiences, augmented reality, design methods, and trend forecasting... the list goes on but I don't have all day.
Innovative or a nuisance?
It's a fair assumption to make that consumers who are more positive about AI and technology, and those with higher fashion involvement would be more open to the use of AI in fashion, although they may be wary of it initially (Liang et al., 2020).
Research suggests that we think about virtual fashion rather positively (Zou et al., 2022).
It's a long shot, but AI in fashion could maybe help to reduce some negative environmental impacts of fashion. Less need for deliveries, less travelling to different countries for fashion week in your private jets of course, less clothing returns... AI unfortunately uses a lot of electricity. Do you know where electricity comes from?
AI might help us to convey the exact emotions and characteristics that we want to, to others. Exuberant, innovative, and out of this world designs and concepts can be easier to create and display as they were originally intended to without barriers and limitations such as mechanics, human error, and well... humans. A Barbie doll's head can turn 360 degrees, but a human's can't.
While AI itself may not be able to think outside the box (just yet), AI in fashion can also be used to help aid human imagination and creativity by suggesting creative ideas and solutions.
AI can be very useful for people who cannot engage with fashion easily. Being able to access clothing virtually allows fashion to be more accessible. For instance, it can be useful for people with disabilities, body confidence matters, and help people to step over the boundary of geographic location.
AI gets us talking. As you've seen with the Balenciaga AI video by demonflyingfox, and the video's copycats, we, the general public, are quite accepting and willing to share and talk about AI on social media. The video went viral within a couple of days. We have a great interest in AI and are curious to see its developments.
AI seems to have great advantages for the fashion industry at the moment, but when is enough, enough?
Things are changing... and rather quickly.
Even this article might be generated by AI...
Thank you for reading.
Huang, M. H., & Rust, R. T. (2021). A strategic framework for artificial intelligence in marketing. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49(1), 30-50. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-020-00749-9
Liang, Y., Lee, S-H., & Workman, J. E. (2020). Implementation of Artificial Intelligence in Fashion: Are Consumers Ready? Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 38(1), 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X19873437
Złotowski, J. A., Sumioka, H., Nishio, S., Glas, D. F., Bartneck, C., and Ishiguro, H. (2015). Persistence of the uncanny valley: the influence of repeated interactions and a robot's attitude on its perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 883. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00883
Zou, Y., Luh, D-B., & Lu, S. (2022). Public perceptions of digital fashion: An analysis of sentiment and Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic modeling. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 986838. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.986838