New analysis reveals the scale of the generative AI opportunity in fashion design, even if real-world, systematic deployment appears to lag behind.
Why AI in the creative industries matters
AI shows great promise but, in its first year of mainstream adoption, most of the disciplines or industries that it has really disrupted have not tended to be particularly lucrative, with the biggest noted declines in freelance copywriting, editing, and graphic design.
A big impact in the fashion or luxury space would be a very different story. Trouble is that the sense of hope and potential that has sent dollar signs whirring in the eyes of executives tends to outstrip the actual use cases of the people who do the designs.
73% of global fashion executives responding to the BoF-McKinsey State of Fashion 2024 report said that generative AI would be a business priority in the coming year.
McKinsey analysis suggests that up to a quarter of the expected value added by AI will come in the design and new product development stage.
Promise ahead of practice: the same study finds that just 28% of companies had tried using the technology in the design and development phase.
The most common usage, according to the report, is in the preparation of marketing copy, with 34% of respondents using the tech for this.
Users remain in an experimental phase, however, with the largest share of respondents (37%) saying that they are not yet using it systematically; 21% use it on a case-by-case basis, while 18% have never used it.
The same report finds that fashion executives are increasingly turning toward brand marketing, with 71% agreeing that they plan to spend more on brand marketing in 2024 than they did this year.
A chime with marketing
WARC’s Marketer’s Toolkit 2024 finds a cautiously progressive majority of 58% of marketers actively testing the technology.
Copywriting is the most obvious use case, with 48% planning to deploy Gen AI for this and other text-based tasks.
But the report also cautions on the technology’s potential to create more murkiness in the media and to prioritise transparency to avoid the sense that brands are deceiving customers.
