Artificial Intelligence and Trend Forecasting in the Fashion Industry: Ethical and Anticipated Ethical Issues
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34190/icair.4.1.3186Keywords:
Artificial intelligence,, Trend forecasting,, Fashion industry,, Empirical and Conceptual analysis,, Ethics,, Anticipatory ethicsAbstract
Trend forecasting within the fashion industry is aimed at predicting the of future popular styles, materials, colors, and all things related to the development of fashion. Trend forecasting is based on information collected about past, present, and projected future developments in the fashion world. AI, as it has been applied in other areas in society, is now being applied within the fashion industry. This analysis will focus on AI being applied to trend forecasting within the fashion industry. Using AI in trend forecasting brings a number of advantages for those in the fashion industry while at the same time raising a number of ethical concerns. Three significant ethical concerns that are related to the employment of AI in the fashion industry are, the invasion of privacy from the data mining required to gather data to make predictions about fashion trends, the consequences for businesses of incorrect trend predictions, and the anticipated environmentally unsustainable nature of fast fashion due to the overconsumption that consumers practice and that is increasingly promoted by AI. Overconsumption is the product of how AI is involved in rapidly forecasting new trends in fashion that consumers then follow. Addressing all of these ethical issues is needed because fast fashion has continued to be demanded by both consumers and investors. New technologies, particularly AI, have allowed fashion brands to develop methods that allow them to be ahead of rapidly changing fashion trends and put high-demand products in stores faster, increasing the prevalence of fast fashion within the fashion industry. Questions now arise about how to address these ethical concerns. Important questions for the fashion industry include what issues will the use of AI in trend forecasting create in the long run within the fashion industry, and how can proactive action be taken within the fashion industry to prevent future ethical issues in the fashion industry? This paper which employs empirical methods to describe the fashion industry while also employing conceptual analysis related to philosophical ethics. The goal of the analysis is to provide, an informative ethical analysis of AI in trend forecasting, while also attempting to develop ethical guidance for concerns involving the use of AI in trend forecasting. The paper perform an anticipatory ethical analysis that attempts to address future concerns about fashion and will close by drawing conclusions about the direction of future analysis related to the application of AI in the fashion industry.