Karen Cheng is one of many creators who use AI as part of their idea generation process. Her last fashion design project (opens in new tab) combines several different AI models to get a smooth, automatic video of a catwalk outfit change, and is a true testament to how AI can benefit artists in such an incredible way.
Her process initially involved using the Dall-E 2 to generate a whole set of designs on top of several photos. By showing the target area of the design with the brush and feeding it with an outline for each type of garment, e.g. It even did a good job of matching the lighting, though she had to sift through a fair amount of bad designs, like the “MC Escher-inspired dress” below.
So HE still isn’t perfect for generating ideas, but she got there in the end.
After the initial generation stage, Cheng ran the frames through EbSynth (opens in new tab) to make it work with video, and then through the program Depth-Aware Video Frame Interpolation (DAIN (opens in new tab)) to smooth the frames.
The final video turned out stunningly and almost matches the professional level of Paul Trillo and Shyama Golden’s incredible sci-fi fashion design project, Cheng reference in a later tweet (opens in new tab).
As usual, the comments are filled with the expected barrage of AI concerns, worried that robots will displace humans and drive them out of creative jobs. A concern I must confess, I have briefly described to myself.
When I spoke with David Holz, the founder of Midjourney’s AI bot that generates the Discord image (opens in new tab)he had a pretty positive view of how the rise of AI is affecting creators:
“When we invented cars, and all of a sudden cars could go faster than we could walk, we didn’t cut off our legs, you know. And there are still professional people moving things around,” he says.
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“It’s like this thing that amplifies people, but doesn’t replace people. Cars didn’t really replace people, airplanes didn’t replace people, boats didn’t replace people. These are things that just strengthen society. They make us stronger and stronger. good and let’s do more.”
I’m with Holz on this one, and as long as AI is still unable to retain the rights (opens in new tab), we creators are probably pretty confident. Just remember to start integrating AI into your workflow so that owners can recognize you as an ally.
