Can AI Replace Fashion Designers?

Famous fashion designers are applauded for their capability to use their creativity to make contemporary designs. They have to balance the design’s mix of historical references, upcoming trends and brand relevance.

Can Artificial Intelligence do it better?

No

Many agree that AI can a valuable for fashion designers, in the same way architects use computer modelling to assist design. This is because AI can process and keep a record of a large amount of data.

What can AI do?

1. Align Demand and Supply – AI ability to track past sales records and current trends for specific regions to predict the expected amount of production necessary. This will help brands to manage stocks and reduce overproduction. Also, demand-led production would make this process more sustainable. Some predict that AI could help to develop a mass scale demand-led production that only makes garments upon purchase.
2. Personalised Service – Machine learning on chatbots could assist consumers. Guided online shopping to make the process more seamless.
3. Assist design by using digital technology to make the sampling process more experimental.
4. Innovate – the collaboration with fashion designers and AI is fairly new compared to other disciplines, which means there is still a long way to go.
5. Develop an efficient design process. The traditional design process is often unstructured with the designer having to begin from scratch each season.
6. Do repetitive tasks. This will helps designers to have a better workflow in terms of technical drawings and sourcing materials.

Why do we need fashion designers?

Fashion designers are not just looking at what has come before but need to innovate for the future. Fashion designers are meant to understand people and their motivations for buying their products and the connected narratives. Fashion Design is about storytelling and can be seen as an art form.

Yes

According to the Economist editor, Kenneth Cukier, ‘AI will absolutely challenge and replace designers’. This is because AI can do designers work at a faster rate and will be able to make more accurate predictions. Meanwhile, with more government restrictions being put on saving personal data bring issues for Artificial Intelligence. The AI results are only as effective as the accuracy of its data.

The answer to this question is debatable depending on the individual’s definition of a fashion designer.

If you are interested about learning more about AI in fashion and digital technology, have a look at our related articles.

How is AI reshaping the fashion industry?

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Source: Business of Fashion