Where Is The Creative Boundary Between AI And Designers

AI has been involved in the operation of fashion industry for a long time.

From supply chain automation system, to big data and cloud computing that can assist business decision-making, and even communication and interaction in the process of digital marketing... In the past, intelligent technology has brought changes to the fashion industry in many dimensions. However, if AI evolves into large language models such as ChatGPT and is applied to more interactive environments in the future, its impact will be revolutionary.

But where is the creative boundary between AI and designers while AI is constantly expanding the boundaries of human behavior and efficiency and approaching "people" infinitely? Creativity itself is based on the perception and feedback between social relations. How far can AI, which relies on human beings to give data, set rules and passively generate results, go in the creative world?

In the summer of 2021, Yu Yimeng, a young teacher who is currently teaching in the School of Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and is the convener of fashion design, led the students to participate in the DeeCamp artificial intelligence training camp. One of the tracks is "fashion design based on AI dialogue", thus starting to pay attention to and explore the "AI+people" working mode in fashion design. Later, after introducing AI technology as a design tool in the course, Yu Yimeng said that AI, as an auxiliary tool, can quickly generate text and image references, greatly improve the efficiency of design and creation, and stimulate more creative possibilities.

Fast forward to 2022, when the algorithm of artificial intelligence continues to mature, and the iteration speed is also very fast, the subdivision application field is becoming more and more "specialized". Yu Yimeng mentioned that Dalle. 2, which was launched by OpenAI at that time, has caused great repercussions in the field of art and design. Recalling her own experience of trying, she said: "It was really a surprise at that time, because the results generated were similar to my style, but there could be infinite iterations. The subsequent hot Mid Journey was more in-depth in precision and details. However, the generated results sometimes have a strong 'Mid Journey' style."

Wang Sicheng, who is engaged in visual arts, also pointed out that AI has improved efficiency. ChatGPT's ability to write code has helped our content producers reduce work pressure. For example, writing code for Unity can be used to model, which greatly reduces the pressure of repetitive work. It can also help him arrange and combine some visual languages as a reference for creation.

"It's also very interesting to open your mind," said Wang Sicheng.

In fact, many studies and the practice of designers and artists show that the boundary between AI and human designers is still clear.

As pointed out through a comparative study at Busan National University in South Korea, the biggest difference between the two is the uniqueness and originality of human design, which often comes from personal experience. Assistant professor Yoon Kyung Lee proposed that AI technology can improve design efficiency and enable designers to focus on difficult creative work.

For independent designers, artists and young teachers who are engaged in the source of creative industries, despite the extremely powerful convenience in application, based on the current fashion, the degree of application of AI in the art industry and the working mode, the creativity of designers is hard to replace AI.

Wang Sicheng expressed to us his excitement from the AI program for image content generation, such as GAN and Stable Diffusion, and then slowly learned about ChatGPT and AIGC. "It's like getting a new tool and new toy," he said. As for the current AI technology, he said: "We have been expecting AI to be more 'human'. But at present, I still cannot let the content produced by AI become an independent work of art."

According to his understanding, so far, Ai has generated content and ChatGPT, which is still in the process of sorting out the past content and information. It is difficult to generate new artistic visual innovation. After experiencing the initial excitement, it will soon find its homogeneity. For him, AI technology also plays a role as a tool, and he probably knows what results will be produced.

In view of the assumption that AI cannot "necessarily" replace human beings in the design field, Yu Yimeng believes that this is the case at present. "At the beginning, I will hear some discussions about AI's' dimension reduction attack 'on designers. I think that although there will be surprises in AI generated design, there is still a distance to replace or even surpass human designers.

She also pointed out that behind AI is algorithm, code, and it is a tool. Its advantage is that it can learn a large number of data sets in a short time, and then generate results according to the rules and keywords set by human beings. Human designers do things like giving data, setting rules, screening, iteration, and decision-making. The final product is the product of human brain thinking.

At present, in her early stage of creation, she will use artificial intelligence technology to find inspiration, reference, or construct atmosphere, but will not directly use the results generated by artificial intelligence technology, but need to conduct post-processing.

Therefore, it is certain that AI technology can indeed "imitate" designers' creation models to a large extent, and conduct a large number of iterations of past styles and existing materials, but only "imitate", let alone surpass creativity. An important core of creative workers is transcendence.

As Wei said, "To a large extent, we want to bring a sense of freshness to consumers, and we need to design clothes that they have never thought of or seen." Therefore, she pointed out that the current understanding of AI cannot replace human creativity.

At present, Zhao Shijian also primarily assists in the creation of models and sketches through artificial intelligence technology, but will not rely too much on them. She also said: "If you want to talk about artistic works and original design, people are still the original core of works."

"I am not sensitive to science and technology, so I always believe that AI is a tool for outward exploration. I am not pessimistic or optimistic, but a purely wait-and-see state," Yang Yingying said.

In her work with the design team, she learned that AI can assist creativity, but at present there are many "wrong" samples, but through continuous training and "feeding", mistakes can be reduced as much as possible. She said to us: "Because what we do is not standardized, to some extent, manual work is more efficient."

Although for designers and artists at the source of creativity, the current AI technology has barriers to varying degrees.

However, just like the development speed of science and technology, AI's own iterative deepening degree. In the future, how far AI will go in creative work is still full of unknown and possibilities.

On the one hand, as we have seen, in terms of technology, channels, information data collection and calculation, etc., AI technology has brought disruptive and positive changes to the fashion industry's operation mode in the material world, and its scope of application is becoming more and more extensive.

On the other hand, AI technologies that once relied on humans to set rules, input information and data, and generate results passively, when they adapt to more rules and larger information and data, how strong this "passive" force is, determines its participation in human creative activities and the depth of symbiosis in social civilization.

In Wang Sicheng's opinion, if the time line is extended, the ultimate goal of AI is to become a "person". At first, it was a pupil and junior high school student, but now ChatGPT has shown the ability of a college student. If it continues to develop in some subdivisions, maybe AI can also be trained as an innovation model.

He mentioned one of his works, "All Faces Confrontation", whose vision mainly uses the technology of GAN to supplement the breakpoint of statue sculpture in the process of cultural transmission, similar to the changes in the process of animal evolution. "I feel that it can inspire me at the conceptual level and give me space for fantasy. Although the content created by AI itself is still unable to become an independent work of art at present, it can provide methods and perspective inspiration in contemporary art creation."

"I am not active, but I am absolutely open". In Yang Yingying's opinion, design and creative work often need brainstorming, and AI is undoubtedly a good object.

When talking about the question whether AI technology is destined to be an outsider for designers with pioneering creativity and unique style, Zhao Shijian also said that he was not always the same. "Artificial intelligence technology can also help independent designers broaden their pioneering style horizontally and produce more interesting design prototypes."

Although at present, the advantage of AI technology is still to help designers improve design efficiency, provide design inspiration, reduce trial and error and waste of resources. The final result is that human beings make decisions after thinking.

But on the other side of the coin, in her opinion, "unexpected" is another advantage of AI technology. Her colleague also thinks: "In fact, it is a very time-consuming process to skillfully apply AI and train yourself to achieve satisfactory results. In addition to the work mode based on image generation, it is also crucial and worth exploring to build your own text library and text logic."