By Aidan Dancey and Maya Smith
The fashion industry is well-known for its edginess and innovation – but one recent innovation could
prove highly controversial. AI, especially generative AI (capable of creating images and writing original
text) has over the last year invaded many industries and our daily lives. AI’s use in creative industries like
fashion is particularly contentious.
Proponents say that AI can help the design and shopping process become faster, more efficient, and
even more sustainable – but opponents cite controversial training methods and resource drain as reasons
AI should be limited or banned.
The fashion industry isn’t widely using AI to design clothing yet – but it’s already transforming parts of the
production process. It could help brands, especially fast fashion brands, keep up with the latest trends.
More practically, it could estimate future sales so brands can reduce product waste and better inform
suppliers. But when generative AI eventually starts being used to design clothing, what will the
repercussions be?
Owner of the New York-based fashion and handbag brand Verafied, Vera C Wang, said that she doesn’t see AI as a very big threat.
She says, “It’s more of a very helpful tool… I mean it’s definitely going to take some people’s jobs… but then it’s going to create more, newer jobs that we haven’t thought about yet.”
Wang’s opinion reflects that of many creatives who aren’t completely opposed to AI and quietly have
optimism about the future. Yet elsewhere, controversy brews. A large, mostly politically progressive and
mostly online, sect of artists are against generative AI in all its forms. Some of them are illustrators and
painters; others are authors and screenwriters; and some are high-profile musicians.
In February 2025, over 1,000 British musicians released a silent protest album entitled ‘Is This What We
Want?’ to fight against companies training models on their music. Participating musicians included Kate
Bush and Dan Smith from the group Bastille.
There’s a long tradition of protest in the creative arts, which has resurfaced with the recent Christies
‘Augmented Intelligence’ Auction.
The auction featured 34 pieces of art, all created with creative input from machine learning and
generative AI models.
The response was overwhelming. An open letter signed by over 5000 artists and creatives called for
Christie’s to cancel the auction. The largest concerns were over the use of AI models and how they are
trained to create the works.
This often involves scraping the internet and processing copyrighted artwork, without licences to do so.
This raises complex issues considering the commercial impact of these AI works and their sale. The open
letter described this as “mass theft of human artists’ work.”
Nevertheless, the sale went ahead, culminating in 28 pieces of work being sold for over $720,000, with
the most expensive piece reaching $277,000.
This raises important ethical questions about creativity and copyright- in the age of generative AI, do
artists even have control over their own creations? In the last few years, some artists- especially the
millions who post their work online- have started to take precautions against AI using their work by using
programs like Glaze.
Glaze is an app developed by the University of Chicago, which ‘cloaks’ images to make them
incomprehensible to AI models and thus useless for ‘training’. However, no similar tool exists specifically
for clothing and fashion design.
It seems unlikely that AI will become any less controversial as it increases in scope and ability. Is it even
possible for these models to exist without using original work from uncredited workers? Yet many
businesspeople and artists think it’s best to harness generative AI for the sake of efficiency and
innovation.
As Vera C. Wang said, there’s “a specific pool of audience that still wants everything handmade… and
they’re just really craving for that kind of craftsmanship. So it’s going to affect it, but they’re [artists and
artisans] not going to disappear.”
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