The Tamesis
This article is part of The Future of Artificial Intelligence, a collection of articles that explores how artificial intelligence will impact the fashion and beauty industries in the coming years.
Earlier this year, tech moguls and CEOs began to wax lyrical about the importance of good taste.
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham predicted in February: “Taste will become even more important in the age of artificial intelligence. When anyone can make anything, the biggest difference will be what you choose to do.” In the same month, OpenAI president Greg Brockman said that “taste is a new core skill.”
In the world of fashion (and many other industries, creative or otherwise), the notion that taste is not always essential is laughable. However, in the era of generative artificial intelligence, the concept of taste has been amplified and distorted, and this highly questioned and debated concept of aesthetic judgment has quickly become a buzzword in 2026. “Every company wants to talk about taste now. Every thought leader in tech wants to write a Substack about taste,” said Andy McCune, founder of visual inspiration platform Cosmos.
It’s a thought leadership event that demonstrates that AI executives are not divorced from humanity’s primary asset – good taste. However, if taste and personal style are innate to humans, developed through exposure to various cultural outputs – books, movies, people on the street – then can AI understand a user’s personal style, or develop its own tastes? This is a pressing issue for the fashion industry, as these instincts come into play at every level, from clothing design to clothing and product recommendations (many of which already come from artificial intelligence platforms and tools).
Some people working in technology are completely convinced it can be done. “I hate to break it to everyone, but you probably don’t have better taste than AI,” one product lead wrote on
However, those who are not insulated from the world of technology are less convinced. “Taste and personal style are developed over time and real-life experience,” says trend forecaster Mandy Lee. “Having no point of contact with the real world is the antithesis of establishing personal taste. So whatever they’re talking about, it’s not the same thing as taste and style.”
Shoppers themselves don’t believe it either. Currently, only 3% of respondents said fashion business Magazines (print and digital) are 57% more likely to say they use AI chatbots to find fashion and style inspiration, followed by street style (47%), fashion blogs, Substack or Pinterest (36%) and influencers (35%).
Richard Thompson Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School and author of “Personal Style,” said personal style has long been used to denote certain types of desires to develop personal character that determine how a person fits into society. Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Make History. People do this by drawing on and incorporating references from all different aspects of life, from other communities to historical periods or social classes, using familiar images as reference points, whether from art and film or celebrities and influencers. Thompson Ford said that good taste is not just copying, but “quoting small parts of familiar wholes and combining them with other things to express something that is, at least to them, unique and personal”.
People are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence for discovery, which is likely to change the way they develop their sense of style. Fashion tech startups are optimistic about AI technology’s ability to eliminate mundanity and remove friction. The AI shopping platform Daydream wants to do just that. Its users aren’t “fashionable with a capital F,” said co-founder and chief brand officer Lisa Yamner. “The people who come to us are need-based; it’s more like fashion lovers than ‘show me the latest Loewe show’ or something like that.”
