Long confined to automation tasks, generative artificial intelligence is now making its way into creative studios. At VivaTech 2026, several companies and creatives came to present their initial experiments. The prevailing, cautious sentiment is meant to be reassuring: AI will not replace creators. It remains to be seen what it actually replaces—and what, by extension, it makes more valuable than before.
Fashion has always incorporated the tools of its time—from new textiles to 3D modeling software—without fundamentally changing the way it operates. Generative artificial intelligence is a different story: for the first time, a tool makes it possible to produce—in a matter of seconds—an image, a silhouette, or a visual world that would previously have required an entire studio, several days of work, and a substantial production budget. It is this sudden abundance—more than the technology itself—that is reshaping the landscape.
Because the real shift isn’t creative—it’s economic. When producing an image was still a rare and costly endeavor, that rarity was what gave it value. A campaign, a lookbook, or a collection visual required a studio, a photographer, and an entire team: their limited number necessitated a rigorous selection process beforehand. With tools capable of generating hundreds of variations in a single afternoon, this material scarcity disappears. What becomes rare, however, is the ability to choose, from this abundance, the image that truly captures the essence of a collection. The creative process is shifting from production to selection, from making to discerning.
This shift directly calls into question the value of a designer’s work, as it has been understood until now. A designer will no longer be judged solely on their ability to produce a novel form: a generative tool can now propose dozens of them in their place. Instead, a designer’s value lies in something a machine lacks: a sensitive memory, an embodied visual culture, and the ability to recognize—among a thousand plausible proposals—the one that tells something true about a house. This is a shift in expertise rather than the disappearance of a profession, but it implies a profound transformation of design studios, where technical mastery of the tool could become less decisive than the aesthetic judgment exercised in the subsequent stages of the process.
This raises a question that technological enthusiasm tends to downplay: that of authenticity. When an image can be generated in a matter of seconds, how can we continue to distinguish a creative act from a purely mechanical process? How can we protect the genuine work of designers—often the result of years of observation and experimentation—in a landscape where the line between inspiration and algorithmic replication is becoming increasingly blurred? These questions, which remain largely unanswered, serve as a reminder that technical innovation can never be completely separated from ethical consideration, particularly in an industry where a brand’s signature and history constitute the essence of its value.
Artificial intelligence will likely not put an end to creativity in fashion. But it is changing the question that fashion houses must ask themselves: no longer how to produce more images, but how to continue producing images that still have something to say.
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