Photo: Budrul Chukrut/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
I regret to inform you another fashion brand has pivoted to AI. On Tuesday, Ralph Lauren announced that they’re launching an AI styling assistant called “Ask Ralph.” According to a Wall Street Journal interview with David Lauren, Ralph Lauren’s son and the chief branding and innovation officer at the brand, the so-called “AI-powered fashion styling helper” is “trained on decades of Ralph Lauren archives and lookbooks” and “can suggest outfit options for events and answer vital fashion questions in natural language.” As of Tuesday, it’s already available on the brand’s app.
In the interview, Lauren acknowledged that not everyone would be thrilled with this feature, but said he’s fine with that. “It’s like putting a line on the runway. Part of fashion is exposing yourself with newness and evolving … And we know there’s a critic for everything. But we also know that that’s feedback,” he said. “We’ll decide if that feedback is useful or not. We want to get in the game. And sometimes we’ll hit it out of the park, and sometimes it’ll just be a step in a direction of evolution.”
Lauren is far from the only fashion exec betting big on AI. In July, an AI model appeared in an advertisement for Guess that was featured in Vogue. Last month, J.Crew put out a whole campaign featuring supposedly “vintage” imagery that was actually created by a self-described “AI photographer.”
For what it’s worth, I tried asking “Ask Ralph” to assemble me outfits for a few different occasions, and it spat back a bunch of uninspired looks — along with links to buy them on the Ralph Lauren website — that any casual shopper could have put together on their own. I got the same outfits — including a plain gray dress with a black scarf, black purse, and black shoes — a couple times.
Some were more confusing. For a casual outdoor wedding, it suggested I wear a white sundress with a cream cable-knit wool bucket hat. To really give it a challenge, I asked it for some avant-garde looks, and it recommended an olive-green turtleneck with blue jeans. Daring!
Finally, I also asked if it agrees that using AI is deeply un-chic. The Ralph bot responded, “I can’t assist with that further.”
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