By Marc Bain – 5 July 2023 – Copyright BoF PROFESSIONAL
Just as photography didn’t spell the extinction of painting, generative AI won’t kill off human designers. It may even create more appreciation for the physical craft of fashion.
…”A new technology is threatening to upend an entire creative field and automate away human skill and invention, making people all but unnecessary as it cranks out an endless supply of soulless junk”
The statement might reflect the current fears about generative artificial intelligence in fashion and other industries, but it also describes how many artists and critics felt about the invention of photography in the 19th century.
Their distress is frequently summed up with the tale of French artist Paul Delaroche, who supposedly exclaimed on seeing a Daguerrotype in 1840, “Painting is dead!”
…Some in fashion today are likewise worrying the boom in generative AI portends a time when all fashion will be designed by algorithm and human creators will be out on the street. It’s too early to say what the technology’s full impact will ultimately be, but the likelihood of that seems low. If art after photography is any indication, fashion will adjust…
..“I think it will push us to an appreciation of physical craft to an even higher extent,” Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at London College of Fashion, told me in June…
…As his title indicates, Drinkwater is no technophobe. The aim of the FIA is to anticipate which technologies will be significant three to five years in the future and explore their possibilities….
What he doesn’t believe is that it will eliminate the need for human creativity or knowledge of the craft of fashion. To produce good designs with AI, they still need to understand physical clothing.
“When it becomes really simple to generate digital imagery, tangibility of physical products becomes even more important to us, he said.”
… Technology is only ever a tool, and while it can have a great impact on the world, it’s the way it’s used that matters ….
https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/technology/generative-ai-wont-be-the-end-of-human-fashion-designers/