This article is part of the Future of AI, a collection of articles that investigates how artificial intelligence will impact the fashion and beauty industries in the years to come.
In 1950, computer scientist Alan Turing proposed the “imitation game”, questioning whether a machine should be considered “intelligent” if its users couldn’t tell they were communicating with a computer. Decades later, the idea became known as the Turing Test, and remains one of the most enduring ways of thinking about AI. But the test has always been about imitation, not understanding. Today, most researchers believe AI can generate, predict, and persuade without genuinely thinking or understanding. Models are becoming increasingly good at recognizing patterns and producing fluent responses, but they still struggle with inference: understanding unspoken context, causal relationships, and the deeper meaning behind what is being said.
These limitations really matter for fashion, which sits in a profoundly unique position when it comes to AI. High fashion is an industry built on all the inferred meaning, emotion, and unspoken context that shapes human desire. Aspiration, identity, and the promise of buying into a certain life form the basis of luxury. Taste, curation, and superior craftsmanship are all notions rooted in human storytelling and the accumulation of references through time.
According to our Vogue Business AI survey, consumers value the accumulation of those references through lived experiences over any efficiency the tech creates. “I’m largely informed by the history of fashion, or that feeling of being drawn to a particular item — both vintage and new — and working out how it plays into what I already own,” says one respondent when describing what draws them to brands. “Any people in real life or online who I deem to be stylish. Personal sense of style is the most interesting and inspiring thing,” says another, of where they go for style ideas.
Only a quarter of consumers (24%) say that AI-generated fashion images and videos are as valuable as those made by humans. Most seek out fashion advice and inspiration from real humans — magazines (57%), street style (47%), fashion blogs/Substacks/Pinterest (36%), and influencers (35%) — over AI chatbots, which just 3% say they use as a source of style inspiration. Two thirds (66%) say their shopping experience would be hindered if an AI robot — instead of a human sales advisor — were to assist them in-store.
Forecasting what will happen in AI tomorrow is impossible, let alone 10 years from now. But our consumer survey — and months of conversations with technologists, analysts, and creatives — make it slightly easier to predict what consumers will want. A decade from now, AI may well have improved enough to generate runway concepts, trend reports, and shopping recommendations that are indistinguishable from those created by a human. But will consumers stop caring if there was a human behind a fashion output? The answer is likely no. What’s more likely, however, is that in 10 years time:
- AI will be ubiquitous in luxury fashion — but only in the background
- The physical in-store experience will become the apex of luxury
- Consumers won’t use mainstream AI agents for luxury fashion purchases. Luxury retailers and brands may design their own as a way to signal taste
- In a world where ‘thinking’ machines are everywhere and anywhere, humanity will become luxury’s new scarcity
