Inside Virtual Dressing Rooms: Online Shopping with Outfit AI

Welcome to this week’s Deep-fried Dive with Fry Guy! In these long-form articles, Fry Guy conducts an in-depth analysis of a cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) development or developer. Today, Fry Guy is exploring Outfit AI, a tool that allows online shoppers to virtually try on clothing. We hope you enjoy!

*Notice: We do not gain any monetary compensation from the people and projects we feature in the Sunday Deep-fried Dives with Fry Guy. We explore these projects and developers solely for the purpose of revealing to you interesting and cutting-edge AI projects, developers, and uses.*

Are you someone who orders a bunch of clothes online, tries them all on, and returns what you don’t like? Do you spend your time trying to figure out if the clothes on the model would look good on you? It’s impossible to tell, right?

The process of shopping for clothes online is outdated, inefficient, and downright frustrating. There has to be a better way! AI is here to save the day … and our sanity, by ushering in a new wave of online clothes shopping, which will entirely overthrow your old methods of mass ordering and returning.

Outfit AI is a tool which serves as a virtual dressing room for shoppers, allowing users to see what they would look like in certain clothing items before they make their purchase.

A VIRTUAL DRESSING ROOM

Outfit AI was born out of Jasper Schoormans’ experimentation with stable diffusion and AI image editing tools. It started when he was playing around with pictures of his kids, using stable diffusion to create different backgrounds and change the appearance of the images. At first, it was just for fun, but over time he became amazed by the possibilities of AI to create realistic renderings of his kids in different backgrounds. He realized that he could also change the clothes in the pictures, like transforming a red dress into a blue dress. He thought, “What if you could do this while shopping for clothes? Wouldn’t this make the whole process so much easier?”

Shopping for clothes online can be a pain. Looking at models with different body shapes, sizes, hair color, and faces wearing clothing items that may or may not look good on you makes the shopping experience completely impersonal. It’s hard to know whether you will like a clothing item on yourself unless you try it on. Outfit AI is offering a solution via a virtual fitting room.

With the help of AI, you can now use your own body and picture to see how a particular clothing item might look on you. This personalized form of shopping allows you to make informed decisions about your purchases without relying on models, stock photos, and a whole lot of guesswork.

Users can use the virtual fitting room by uploading a photo of themselves and then allowing Outfit AI to work its magic, merging photos of clothing onto the shopper’s own body, creating a realistic image of what the user would look like wearing that given item. Schoormans describes his vision for the project, telling FryAI, “Users can install this, it will automatically scan the inventory, people can upload their own pictures into the virtual fitting room and see any piece of clothing they want on their own image.”

Only five years ago, we could hardly imagine this being possible. Even editing and changing photos was difficult. Changing the background of an image was difficult and choppy, and now with the help of AI, we can seamlessly try on clothes with the click of a button.

MARKETING MADNESS?

Outfit AI has the potential to not only benefit the shopper, but can offer massive opportunities for retailers as well. By using AI-generated images to showcase their clothing, retailers can eliminate the constraints of physical appearances and create more diverse and creative marketing campaigns. For instance, the Outfit AI team is working on email marketing tools that will have the ability to create personalized emails, where instead of receiving pictures of models wearing clothes, potential customers can receive pictures of themselves wearing recommended clothing items, including in a variety of backgrounds and in different contexts which fit the clothing style. For example, a retailer could depict a potential customer in the gym wearing new workout gear or in Italy wearing a sleek dress. This more personalized approach can inspire potential customers to explore more items they otherwise would not consider. Think about it: when people see a model wearing an outfit, there is a sort of mental displacement from the individual towards the item, but if they see themselves wearing a certain item, they might be more inclined to explore it. As Schoormans remarks, “This will be a very personalized form of marketing.”

Along with more personalized marketing strategies, virtual fitting rooms can help improve the efficiency of shipping and the overall supply chain. By using virtual fitting rooms, consumers can make more accurate decisions about their clothing purchases. This reduces the need for excessive online shopping and returns, saving time and effort for both the consumer and the retailer. It also minimizes the environmental impact of shipping and returns by minimizing the need for packaging and repackaging and excess pollution from delivery vehicles. Not to mention, by reducing the number of returns and minimizing the number of unnecessary shipments, retailers can optimize their inventory management. This can cut costs for companies and offer a more sustainable approach to retail.

The Outfit AI team envisions seamless integrations for their project, making the tool easy to use for retailers. In the near future, Schoormans envisions a Shopify integration or even a proprietary sort of Shopify app, where customers can quickly try on different clothing items in the virtual fitting room. In this way, “people who have clothing stores can install Outfit AI, scan the inventory, train the model, and have a virtual fitting booth app anywhere on their site.” From here, people would have the ability to opt in to get the aforementioned email newsletters, for example, and advertisements personalized to them.

WHAT DOESN’T FIT?

While the use of AI in virtual fitting rooms offers exciting possibilities for online shopping, there are several challenges and concerns that need to be addressed before we start trying on all the clothes we can.

One of the main concerns with virtual fitting rooms is the issue of data privacy. Users are required to upload their personal images in order to try on clothing virtually. This raises questions about how these images are stored, who has access to them, and how they are used. Schoormans recognizes this concern, stating, “I thought it was really important that this worked with just one picture … as opposed to AI apps where you need to upload 10-20 pictures of your face, which is inconvenient and also a bit scary. This [Outfit AI] is just one picture you choose to upload yourself.” This simplified process might mitigate this concern for users, who often upload at least a profile photo to various online profiles and websites.

Along with privacy concerns, the introduction of Outfit AI to the marketing industry has the potential to disrupt the traditional modeling industry. By leveraging AI editing tools and using customer photos in place of models, companies can showcase clothing without relying on human models. This could challenge the traditional modeling structure and potentially impact job opportunities for models. But when fully considered, the modeling industry has continually faced backlash for its extensive photoshop usage and unrealistic beauty standards, and it has been looking for solutions in recent years. Rather than sparking a new problem, virtual fitting rooms could offer a solution to one that already exists. Technology like Outfit AI is providing a more realistic alternative to traditional modeling, personalizing the appearance of the “model” to any given individual. Not to mention, by using the customers’ personal images, it eliminates the constraints of the physical appearances of models and the continued complication of finding the right type of models to display certain clothing. As Schoormans explains, “It’s not really possible to distinguish between real and fake anymore. So why bother with models? Why bother with real photoshoots?”

THE FUTURE OF ONLINE SHOPPING

Virtual fitting rooms are arriving, and unlike fitting rooms at the mall, they are never fully occupied. So when you are looking for the perfect outfit to rock your job interview or impress your next date, there is no longer a need to order a billion outfits and return those you don’t like. Rather, virtual fitting rooms like that of Outfit AI will allow you to try on various outfits entirely online, ensuring you always look your best, with no more guesswork and no more returns!

WANT TO SEE THE FULL INTERVIEW?

Our FryAI team sat down with Jasper Schoormans, founder of Outfit AI, to discuss the project as well as the future of AI in the retail space. You can view the full conversation here: