Whatever you are trying to do, it seems like an AI app exists to help you – including help you design clothing. It’s cool, but my hot take is I don’t think that AI can actually design (or can’t design yet, anyway).
AI can certainly create beautiful and imaginative images or add more depth and realism to your design sketches, but that is not design. It is communicating and visualizing your design. Design involves planning, purpose, and understanding. AI simply executes something that mimics a design. It doesn’t understand what it is doing or make decisions in alignment with the purpose.
AI doesn’t know how a garment functions, how it feels to get it on or off, or what the cost implications are of certain design details. That is knowledge that only a human designer can bring to their work.
I was talking to an interior designer friend this past weekend about AI and how she was playing around with AI to generate bathroom designs. She said that in several images it came up with, it placed the toilet inside the shower! We had a good laugh. AI knew that toilets and showers both go in bathrooms, but didn’t get their function or purpose.
I’ve seen some very non-functional garments generated by AI as well – ones with zippers that lead to nowhere, pants without any closure to get into them, or button plackets that jogged off like two roads that don’t connect. The AI knows what a button placket looks like and knows that it is often found on shirts, but it doesn’t actually understand what a button placket does and what its functional purpose is.
Don’t get me wrong, I think AI is a wonderful tool for sparking new ideas or visually communicating your designs once you’ve come up with the concept. I just don’t think it has the ability yet to solve problems like a real designer. Understanding the purpose is a key to any good fashion design and good fashion designer.