There's one thing about AI photo shoots that's bugged me for a while- the fit. You can take a garment that fits badly in real life, feed it to AI, and it'll look perfect on the model. If that image ends up in marketing or on a product page, the customer buys it expecting that fit and then gets thoroughly disappointed when the parcel arrives. Why should they trust you again after that?
I don't use AI for photo shoots in my own work- it's just not relevant to what I do. I build out the garment in 3D to get the design right before it goes to the factory, and whether the model behind it looks photo realistic or not has never mattered to me. What matters is that the measurements of the model are true to life. But I got curious and experimented with it. Except I started with a 3D digital garment that I'd already perfected the fit with. I then generated a model using CLO's inbuilt AI render studio, and then ran it through another AI tool (Gemini) to make him look a bit more human and drop him into a forest. I actually like how it turned out- despite looking a little dead behind the eyes.
Where I do think this workflow could genuinely be useful is internal- visualising a design, showing a buyer or a bigger team what something could look like before committing to a full shoot. Not a replacement, just a quick way to generate some ideas.
This is why building the design in 3D still matters and photographing the real physical garment on a real physical body matters. If the digital garment isn't fitting right in CLO, no amount of AI polish is going to fix it.
Renée Bedell is a fashion design consultant specialising in outdoor-focused menswear development. She helps get your idea factory-ready so that it gets made right. Book your free 30 minute consultation to talk through your idea.