Most of us grew up believing that artificial Intelligence (AI) is something we would only see in technology businesses or sci-fiction movies — never imagined AI in fashion industry, not even for a second, but actually, it is doing wonders everywhere, in every field and more than we could have ever thought.

AI x Fashion

Artificial Intelligence and fashion are two fields that have usually been misunderstood, but now is the time to clear your perception as we admit the creativity in both.

AI is already being integrated into many different artistic fields, including but not limited to design and fashion.

Because of AI’s potential to pinpoint exact customer desires and reduce excessive waste, fashion fanatics are now using artificial Intelligence at a whirlwind pace to innovate and bring better fashion for the future.

Fashion industry, one of the biggest industries in the world have a market size of US $3 trillion as of 2022.

Artificial Intelligence is stepping up the game for fashion ecosystem with its creative solutions — from manufacturing to designing to selling the items. The fashion industry is now a “sustainable fashion industry” with AI. It makes you pick better fashion choices and improve your business’s top-line performance and customer service while lowering costs.

Right below, we discussed how artificial Intelligence is changing the fashion industry with its uses, solutions, applications, and impact of AI on this industry.

Uses of AI in Fashion Business

Apparel Production

Customer demands clothes, and this demand has no end. Here, you need to learn how to tackle this ever-growing customer demand while keeping in mind the planet’s limited resources. Applying cogent Artificial intelligence in fashion industry to meet customer needs is quite a gray concept.

AI controls and improves base materials’ quality and helps in grading yarn. It can be done by humans, too. Still, AI holds a more consistent and higher standard for materials — raising the quality of garments to the next level.

Furthermore, AI speeds up the fabrication process, identifying and fixing faults quickly and with maximum accuracy.

Apparel Designing

Fashion brands around the world are leveraging Artificial intelligence for apparel design. AI collects data on customers to find what better suits them. It helps you choose clothes based on the fabric, colors, and style preferences.

AI analyzes previous clothing styles and possible trends with an optimal algorithm, developing new inclusive clothing designs.

Among leading American fashion designers, Tommy Hilfiger collaborated with IBM for an initiative that helps fashion designers improve their design skills with AI.

AI also simulates boosting the concept of fast fashion and enables you to use AI solutions for fashion design.

Merchandizing

Traditionally, you choose a pair of shoes or clothes depending upon your instinct and the product’s previous reviews. But now, most of your buying decisions are influenced by dynamic factors such as new market trends.

Along with predictive analytics, AI in the fashion industry empowers brands to foresee fashion trends and give you the upper hand by suggesting products you like, brought out for display at just the right time when looking for the most fashionable items of the season.

Furthermore, AI observes dynamic trends and performance of products with real-time data analytics. It significantly helps marketing team to adopt a proactive strategy to meet customer demands, staying relevant in the fashion business.

Inventory Management

Inventory replenishment manifests in either overstocking or understocking.

Pitching into this long-term concern, AI-powered ecosystem is built that tracks how much stock is available, make intelligent order estimations, and predicts which items will be in demand soon.

Inventory management ensures that any product you demand is always available in optimal condition. However, the struggle is real to ace this goal, but not with Artificial intelligence.

Since consumer spending and demand are growing at 30% year-over-year, over 70% of all businesses say their priority is to leverage real-time inventory solutions.

Harnessing AI in fashion inventory and management offers thorough analytics of the warehouse location and inventory calendar of products. You can track and manage the product inventory cycle in real time.

AI-powered predictive forecasting is an absolute tool that helps understand consumer behavior and choices so that you can manage the inventory of your best-selling products.

Competitor Analysis

When you are in a business, you want to rule the industry. And that could be possible if you offer right product with right price tag. For example, if you offer the same product at a comparatively lower price, customers will be more likely to buy from you.

Regardless of the niche, you’re in, right data can help you make informed business decisions. By knowing what’s going on in the fashion industry and comparing yourself with other like-minded designers, you’ll have a better idea of what steps to take next.

With AI, you can see trends in the data and predict customer demand, which is for sure a competitive edge for you. These insights may go overlooked without Artificial intelligence.

Sales Forecasting

Being a business owner, if you don’t know how many products you’ll sell, you won’t either know how many inventories to keep in stock or what to order from suppliers. Instead of relying on guesswork, you can make solid sales forecasts with Artificial intelligence.

The smart combo of predictive analytics and AI helps you make smarter forecasts with real-time data to observe shifting trends and stock performance as they are happening. Hence, buying and merchandising teams can adopt a proactive strategy to address consumer demand as it arises and always stays relevant.

Top-Notch AI solutions for Fashion Designing

  • Smart Mirrors

AI-powered smart mirrors simplify your shopping experience, allowing you to visualize the clothes virtually. You can select a perfect outfit without even actually putting them on your body.

Smart AI mirrors are usually installed in changing rooms of a shop with a touch screen glass. You can use the mirror to browse various looks and can add them to the fitting room for trying them on. Moreover, you can complete your look with intelligent recommendations like color options and sizes available in these smart mirrors.

  • Automated Sewing

From sewing to sorting clothes, every step in fashion designing is labor-intensive. However, AI can perform these mundane tasks more swiftly and accurately while lowering workers’ costs and burdens.

AI-enabled machines and robots can perfectly stitch fabrics and detect clothes’ faults. Also, Automated sewing with Artificial Intelligence offers high-quality assurance, telling how newly stitched designs will look.

With its full swing in leveraging Artificial intelligence, the eCommerce giant Amazon is also using an AI-enabled fashion designer algorithm that designs clothes by copying the actual styles of many in-vogue clothes, further applying them to a new clothing item.

  • Rental Fashion with AI

Buying outfits for special occasions is a pain for our wallets as well as the planet. Rental fashion is the ultimate solution, saving you the expenses of purchasing expensive outfits that are almost single-use.

AI in fashion has taken the potential of used clothes to the next level, bringing additional environmental benefits. AI-enabled rental fashion platforms work on a membership subscription-based model, allowing you to rent clothes for a flat monthly or weekly price. AI robots recognize the fabric material, clean them to the corresponding method, and sort and prepare them for rent.

  • Fashion Recommendations

While browsing or searching the fashion items on e-commerce sites, AI recommends other similar items to you, as per your preferences, budget, and other factors. Machine learning technology plays its role here — analyzing your behavior and what kind of products you are looking for; it recommends similar products, and you should probably check.

  • Virtual Try-ons

Virtual try-on for fashion clothing combines computer vision, artificial intelligence (AI), recommendation algorithms, augmented reality (AR), or virtual reality (VR) to provide an immersive user experience.

Virtual try-on has propounded a sweet sense of relief to fashion brands unable to demo their products offline.

In Mckinsey’s 2019 Apparel CPO Survey, 83% of respondents believed they would use physical samples less often than virtual samples by 2025.

Virtual try-on lets you try on clothing without having it shipped or even leaving your house. The fashion industry, with a sophisticated blend of AR and VR, creates a customer experience that is safe, convenient, and efficient for everyone, whether online or in-store.

Also known as virtual fitting technology, virtual try-on lets you try on garments for size, fit, and style without even physically wearing them.

This Super cool technology alleviates abounding challenges of today’s fashion industry —struggles with a fit, sky-high returns, and the bad environmental impact.

Various Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications in Fashion Industry

AI is bragging about enriching experiences with its splendid applications in the fashion industry, making you pick a sustainable fashion that suits you best.

Let’s have a closer look at the applications of AI in fashion Industry:

  • Chatbots

Retail chatbots are the New Black in a constantly sprouting fashion industry.

You want to feel catered to and understood when you shop, especially from big designers.

Also known as intelligent assistants or AI stylists, fashion chatbots are the nearest thing to make you feel special. Fashion giants have turned to AI for creating more personalized experiences with AI-powered chatbots — they are helping brands big time by delivering a personal touch that’s often missing in a digital space.

Brands like Sephora, Victoria’s Secret, and Tommy Hilfiger cater to customer needs with conversational chatbots, leading them to brand loyalty.

Moreover, chatbots encourage you to shop more with upselling and cross-selling opportunities. These factors play together to drive more revenue and significant returns for brands.

  • Visual Searches

Visual searches simplify your searching process and show you what is closest to what you have in your mind, knocking out futile searches and decision fatigue.

You can use a camera to capture products and search the same online that would otherwise be a struggle using a text query. Today, most product searches happen on a mobile device, so it is more intuitive to snap a picture of an outfit quickly and look for similar ones on any platform.

The image recognition market is worth $25 billion, and in two years from now, brands that incorporate visual search tools on their sites are more likely to grow their revenues by over 30%.

AI-powered visual search technology understands the content and context of the images and, in return, gives you a list of related photos.

  • Fashion Styling

Artificial intelligence figures out what suit you—or doesn’t, as the case may be.

Online styling applications leverages machine learning technology and make personalized clothing items based on your size, budget, and style preferences.

Stitch Fix is the most popular style subscription service that turns to AI for styling. It offers a quick quiz about your style and preferences. Moreover, it matches you with an AI-enabled personal stylist and helps you find your “vibe.” Then it leaves all the work to AI to suggest the outfits for you.

Summing up

The worlds of fashion and technology are impending with breakthrough ideas. Everyone wants the best styled and perfect-looking clothes for them. Artificial intelligence is doing nothing but making everything better in the fashion industry, from factories to shelves.

With AI, fashion market is expected to grow at a CAGR of +40% in the next seven years (2020–2027) — the future of fashion is intelligent.

AI predicting accurate fashion trends assist brands in creating new looks and styles that are more likely to be appreciated by you. Moreover, AI figures out what you want in fashion, making you happy and satisfied.

Since AI is human-created, you can consider it a tool rather than a replacement for human creativity. It all results in a fashion industry that is more streamlined, sustainable, and wreaks competitive advantages.