Revolutionizing Fashion: The Bold Move to Bypass Photographers and Models with AI

Israeli AI firm Botika has obtained $8 million in initial funding to assist in the advancement of its generative AI technology, which transforms a basic product image of clothing into a full-fledged fashion shoot, featuring AI-generated human models.

Fashion designers and retailers can photograph their products, upload them to Botika, and select an AI-generated model along with a background for their new “realistic” product imagery. The company, now with an additional $8 million, claims it can aid firms in decreasing “visual production expenses” by 90% and enhance their speed to market by threefold.

Indeed, it lowers costs and optimizes turnaround time by omitting real individuals from the process, including fashion and commercial photographers as well as models. If a company possesses images of their apparel on a person, they can also utilize Botika to fundamentally alter the model’s appearance, including their size, shape, and skin tone.

Consumers heavily depend on images of garments on individuals to influence their purchasing choices, and Botika contends that its AI platform simplifies the clothing sales process, particularly for smaller online-only fashion companies.

“The production expenses of a photography session for e-commerce can vary between tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars per shoot,” states Botika. “Botika’s AI Generated Fashion Model tackles this significant challenge for fashion labels and removes the obstacle to high-quality, on-brand visuals at an affordable price and timeline.”

Botika features a “varied” selection of AI-generated models, encompassing individuals of different appearances, ethnicities, sizes, and age groups. The AI models are created internally by Botika, likely to address some of the biases that are typically associated with generative AI.

Numerous photographers express concerns regarding the influence of generative AI on their professions and sources of income. Generative AI has already established considerable impacts on product photography, and it is now making its way into fashion, a substantial sector of commercial product photography.

It is not solely smaller brands that have started experimenting with AI either. In 2023, Levi Strauss & Co. began exploring generative AI to, as they claim, “enhance diversity,” a decision that PetaPixel labeled as “tone-deaf.”

Regardless, firms like Botika are expanding quickly. Botika reports a ninefold increase in revenue and an elevenfold increase in its customer base within the last year. The company is responding to a demand that is present and capitalizing on a booming market, as numerous companies are eager to cut costs swiftly, which involves abandoning traditional photography and foregoing real human models.

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Image credits: Botika