New artificial intelligence to make fashion design more efficient

“Designers have their prints, patterns, colors and sketches and upload the images,” Wong told AFP. “Our AI system can then recognize these design elements and come up with further suggestions for designers to improve and modify their original design.” Wong said AiDA’s particular strength was its ability to present “all possible combinations” for the designer to consider, something he said was impossible in the current design process.

An exhibition at Hong Kong’s M+ Museum in December featured collections by 14 designers developed using the tool. But Wong stressed that this is about “making it easier for designers to be inspired” and not “using AI to take over the designer’s job, and control their creativity.” “We must appreciate the original creativity of the designer,” he added.

Wong heads the Artificial Intelligence in Design Lab (AidLab), a collaboration between Britain’s Royal College of Art (RCA) and Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where he is a professor of fashion.

RCA Vice Chancellor Naren Barfield predicted that the impact of artificial intelligence on the fashion industry will be “transformational”. “The impact will be enormous, from the ideation and conceptualization stage to prototyping, all the way to manufacturing, distribution, and ultimately recycling,” he said.

So-called personalization is already being used to improve the customer experience through better product recommendations and more effective searches, helping shoppers find what they want quickly and easily.

But as technology develops, a range of highly specialized tools are also being developed.