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At the session “Artificial Intelligence in the Creative Process: Tool, or Co-Author?”, held on September 28 as part of the BRICS+ Fashion Summit, experts discussed where the line lies between optimizing the creative process and delegating creative decisions to AI, how the role of the designer is changing, and what intellectual property issues arise when using AI-powered tools.

Participants in the discussion agreed that AI can be a useful assistant to designers, but it only suggests options, while the concept, selection, and final creative decision remain with the person.
“AI can help in the design process, but it cannot understand how a model feels or whether an embroidery belongs in a particular place. AI is more of an assistant because it has no emotions, feelings or experience, and the final decision always remains with the person,” said Kanika Goyal, Founder and Creative Director of KGL (India).

Tery Carola, CEO of Seychelles Fashion Week, supported this view. He noted that AI opens up opportunities for smaller industry players to communicate with a wider audience, while at the same time it is important to maintain a connection with the original cultural context. “Although AI can generate options based on a prompt, it cannot immerse itself in our culture,” the speaker emphasized.

“We understood from the very beginning that we would have to learn to ‘be friends’ with AI. It is important for our designers to stay true to their country’s identity, and AI can help create a prototype. But AI does not choose what resonates with you – this is where the role of a person is very important. And since the designer writes the prompt themselves, they are the author of the idea from the outset,” said Vahan Khachatryan, President of the Fashion Chamber of Armenia.

Vera Soboleva, AI Researcher at AIRI, also spoke about why the quality of the result depends on the user. According to her, during training, a model sees a huge number of examples and seeks to produce the most probable – in other words, average – result. Therefore, to achieve a truly creative solution, a person needs their own idea, a precise prompt, vision, and taste. “It still remains with the person,” Vera Soboleva emphasized.

Darya Khalfina, Editor-in-Chief of The Symbol, agreed with the other speakers: “It is important to be a professional in your field. There is no point in using AI if you do not understand the subject. The creative part will always remain with the person. I am convinced that a professional cannot be replaced by AI.”

Elena Plavova, Creative Director of Murmurizm, spoke about how her collections come to life: “I come up with most of my designs myself, but I do not like drawing. And I have many ideas in my head, so I ask AI to generate a prototype. The rest of the work is then done manually, and the final result can sometimes differ significantly from the prototype created by AI.”

Evgeniya Ezhikova, Founder of es-sence easy impact and Advisor to the CEO of the National Center for Industrial Design LAB 20/50, also drew attention to the dual effect of the spread of AI. According to her, AI is democratizing access to tools for research, analysis, and prototyping. At the same time, there is a risk of standardized design becoming more widespread. In her view, AI will not be able to replace specialists at the final stages of product development in the coming years, where professional experience and decision-making are required.

Daria Voinova, CEO of IPEX, focused in her presentation on the legal aspects of using artificial intelligence and the protection of intellectual property. She urged designers to check the rights to the data and references they use, the terms of use of specific AI models, the degree of borrowing, and their own creative contribution, as well as to retain sketches, photographs, and other materials that can document the creation process. “Artificial intelligence democratizes the process of creation, but by no means the idea or the creative contribution,” she emphasized.

Thus, the discussion showed that the spread of AI does not so much change the very principle of authorship in fashion as redistribute the stages of creative work. AI can accelerate research, offer numerous visual options, and help formulate and communicate an idea to a team, but it is the person who defines the task, evaluates the result, selects the appropriate solution, and is responsible for its compliance with the cultural, professional, and legal context. At the same time, the easier it becomes to generate large numbers of options, the more important professional selection, personal experience, and the author’s concept become.

The BRICS+ Fashion Summit is taking place in parallel with Moscow Fashion Week, which runs from September 26 to October 1 at the Central Exhibition Hall 'Manege.' Admission to all events is free with prior registration.

The strategic partner of the BRICS+ Fashion Summit is Sber.

The general partner of the BRICS+ Fashion Summit is Wildberries.

The technology partner of the BRICS+ Fashion Summit is the GigaChat neural network.

More content from the BRICS+ Fashion Summit is available on the event's official Wibes account, as well as under the hashtag ##BRICSFashionSummit.

The official photo service for the event is the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia.