Does Artificial Intelligence Technology Benefit Sustainable Fashion?

 AI clothing, despite being relatively new, is part of an industry which is currently booming by providing opportunities in areas such as design, manufacturing, logistics, marketing, and sales. The technology is used for many things from digital stylists to creating bespoke outfits for consumers, and many fashion brands are now getting behind it. In fact, global spending on artificial intelligence technologies within the fashion industry is expected to reach $7.3 billion through 2022.

Whilst digital fashion in general reflects sustainability due to technologies like AR and VR fashion reducing waste and e-commerce sales, does AI clothing have the same effect? American-based apparel company RushOrderTees uses artificial intelligence to design clothing as well as predicting trends. The brand uses Generative Pre-Trained Transformer-3 which creates human-like texts through deep learning and StyleGan which is an AI that creates images based on text inputs. GPT-3 produced outputs for existing fashion trends along with future trends too, which was then edited to generate images through StyleGan and then passed on to designers. As well as RushOrderTees, the first artificial brain of the fashion industry was created by American start-up Finesse after the company’s AI investigated fashion trends. The company produces clothing within 25 days through algorithmic designs and uses 3D modelling software to reduce cost and waste that is generated when creating samples.

On the contrary, California-based tech start up Revery AI has created an online dressing room for customers using computer vision and artificial intelligence which offers users to change their clothing model, hairstyles, and poses. As well as this, American company StyleScan offers a similar service for customers where they can try on apparel from brands in a virtual format through 3D scanning, resulting in a 40% reduction of returns for companies who use the technology.

 However, whilst there are benefits to this technology, there are also some downfalls which may affect the sustainable fashion industry. By predicting trends, this will only insinuate to consumers that the lifespan of their clothing is not forever, and will promote ‘on-trend’ clothing which of course does not last long due to trends constantly changing. Finesse may use 3D software, but the quickly produced clothing only increases demand for having access to products in a short space of time, such as fast fashion.

Whilst it has provided opportunities for brands through offering style advice for customers, fashion technology offers many more advancements that can steer consumers away from fast fashion and reduce the environmental impact. We live in a time where people can be social-media orientated, which provides opportunities for digital clothing where consumers can upload images in products which haven’t been physically produced or sent to them. In fact, company DressX believed there was a gap in the market for this and created a platform for people to send in photos of themselves to be digitally dressed. As well as DressX, company Carlings allows consumers to purchase an item of digital clothing, upload a photo of themselves, and the Vice artists will dress up the customer which then is sent to them to be shared on social media platforms. The collection is for Carling’s digital fashion campaign, where 100% of the revenues made are donated to Water Aid which is a charity aiming to provide communities with clean water. Such platforms can provide consumers with the excitement of trying on clothes and browsing products without contributing to fast fashion sales. On top of this, there is no harm when discarding items as it is digital and therefore won’t have a negative impact such as ending up in landfill. Although it does have an environmental impact due to the carbon footprint - see https://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/article/digital-fashion-week-sustainablity.

At Scarlet Destiny, we find fashion technology provides endless opportunities for sustainable fashion and hope that, in the future, we can experiment with digital fashion to offer consumers an alternative way of receiving our products.

SD x

Information sourced from:

https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2021/04/10437521/digital-fashion-environment-meaning

https://techhq.com/2021/09/next-looks-can-ai-technology-predict-the-future-of-fashion/

https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-ai-fashion-styling/

https://www.thefabricant.com/carlings

Featured Image sourced by DrSJS & Gerd Altmann, Pixabay.

Image 1 sourced by Gerd Altmann, Pixabay.

Image 2 sourced by David Bruyland, Pixabay.

Image 3 sourced by Possessed Photography, Unsplash.

Image 4 sourced by Gerd Altmann, Pixabay.