Fashion Month: Can AI replace fashion designers?

LONDON, United Kingdom — Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the fashion world but the fast growing technology will never be a replacement for designers' "original creativity", according to the head of a pioneering project.

Fashion innovator Calvin Wong has developed the Interactive Design Assistant for Fashion (AiDA) — the world's first designer-led AI system. It uses image-recognition technology to speed up the time it takes for a design to go from a first sketch to the catwalk.

"Designers have their fabric prints, patterns, color tones, initial sketches and they upload the images," Wong said. "Then our AI system can recognize those design elements and come up with more proposals for designers to refine and modify their original design."

Wong said AiDA's particular strength was its ability to present "all the possible combinations" for a 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 it was about "facilitating designers inspiration" not "using AI to take over a designers job, to take over their creativity".

"We must treasure the designer's original creativity," he added.

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

'Transformational'

RCA vice chancellor Naren Barfield predicted the impact of AI on the fashion industry would be "transformational."

"The impact is going to be huge from the ideation and conception stage through to prototyping, right the way through to manufacture,