Fashion has been an art form for centuries. From frilly, fifteenth-century gowns to Coco Chanel’s little black dress, fashion has proven to be a powerful form of self-expression, as well as a reflection of centuries of history. Patterns, fabrics, craft, and process speak to great cultural significance and personal talent. However, the future of fashion looks barren as computer-generated avatars begin to replace real-life models, and artificial intelligence generates trends at the expense of quality and even human life. AI threatens to take the soul out of our attire.
Before the rise of fast fashion, garments were designed and fabricated with purpose. Especially before the industrial revolution and mass-production, clothing represented the language, customs, and dynamism of cultures across the globe. We see vestiges of this in surviving traditional dress; In Ghana, we see the Kente cloth, a special garment worn by the elite; in Japan, the Kimono, a robe that dates back hundreds of years and spans many different cultural eras. Even trends that don’t stand the test of time can give us important information about a period. Brazen, oversize hats and women’s trousers took off with the suffragist movement in the late 19th-century, but only one of those trends has survived to our time. Context and intention create meaning. Algorithms do not. While critics argue that AI synthesizes trends in modern fashion to generate new items, this data can only guess at which types of clothing will be most profitable in the short-term. The fashion world secures sales not through quality or intention, but through sheer volume.
In March 2025, H&M announced that the company would be creating 30 digitized versions of existing models. Meanwhile, Levi Strauss began exploring similar digital models as part of its diversity initiatives. (If nobody gets hired to begin with, it’s not exclusionary, right?) These companies use costs to justify their decisions. While a single professional fashion shoot in the US typically costs $10,000-$30,000, the one-time cost for creating an AI with a variety of digital models may cost around $50,000-$100,000. In the eyes of these companies, these “photoshoots” are a long-term investment. But how can billion-dollar corporations justify their actions when they can clearly afford to compensate real-life models? Surely it’s better for consumers, especially young women, to see clothes modeled on human bodies, rather than on AI-generated imitations.
Fast fashion has vastly degraded the industry in recent years, with dire social consequences. Companies outsource their production to China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, and India, where worse working conditions and lower pay increase profit margins. On the consumer side, rapid trend cycles and low prices encourage buyers to purchase and discard large quantities of clothes and accessories, thus creating an impossible demand. Generative AI will accelerate this cycle, and probably already has. AI-generated graphic designs and entire articles of AI-generated clothing have already appeared on sites like Temu and Shein. Whether or not anyone will buy them is a different story.
AI has already had a detrimental effect on the fashion industry. Though it may seem inconsequential to the average consumer, generative AI affects us all. Clothing represents both the people who make it and the culture it comes from. What happens when humanity is taken out of the equation? When real models can no longer compete with their artificial competitors? When generative AI is used to fuel an already exploitative industry? Fashion is a human form of self-expression. AI has no business being a part of it.