AI on Fashion’s Cutting Edge
Instructor Leslie Browning-Samoni weaves AI into her merchandising curriculum.

Leslie Browning-Samoni’s fashion merchandising students used artificial intelligence to help them create a Western wear brand. Overall, she said, students found the text-based technology helpful but the image-based AI less so. Photo by Rodger Mallison
AI on Fashion’s Cutting Edge
Instructor Leslie Browning-Samoni weaves AI into her merchandising curriculum.
LESLIE BROWNING-SAMONI, INSTRUCTOR II OF FASHION MERCHANDISING, has observed how generative artificial intelligence like ChatGPT is transforming the fashion industry, with uses not only in creating and manufacturing products but also in their marketing and distribution. One brand she recently researched, ASOS, offers its online customers an AI tool to help select their correct size.
In fall 2023, Browning-Samoni integrated AI into a project in her upper-level product development classes, asking students to use the technology to help them create a Western wear brand. During the project, Browning-Samoni documented student responses to using AI.
“I think it’s important for students to come an understanding that AI is built on the information that’s put into it and that there can be biases in that information that it’s drawing from.”
Leslie Browning-Samoni
The results informed her dissertation, “AI and Fashion: Student Perspectives on the Application and Ethical Use of Various Forms of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) in a Fashion Context,” written as she completed her doctorate in apparel merchandising and design from Iowa State University in spring 2024.
“Leslie’s work is at the forefront of research being conducted at the intersection of artificial intelligence and fashion education,” said Rachel Eike, associate professor of apparel merchandising and design at Iowa State and Browning-Samoni’s major professor. “Her work demonstrates the challenges that text-based and image-generated AI content pose for our students as they enter the industry.”
For her fashion merchandising students to succeed in the industry, Browning-Samoni said, they must adapt to this technology, understanding its practical applications as well as its ethical pitfalls.
“Instead of being afraid of these tools,” Browning-Samoni said, “I wanted to learn how we can embrace them and help our students learn how to use them in a way that’s going to make them successful and also in a way that’s not going to threaten their careers in the future.”
For their Western wear assignment, Browning-Samoni asked students to create a professional-level brand profile, consumer profiles and trend images. Her students’ familiarity with similar projects helped guide them to first research their ideas using more standard means, including trend websites like Worth Global Style Network.
Students then turned to free AI tools for assistance, using ChatGPT 3.5 for help with text and Bing Image Creator, a version of DALL-E, for help with visuals.
Browning-Samoni said that overall her students liked text-based AI, which they thought elevated their output, better than image-based AI, which they found more problematic. The image generators can be glitchy, adding extra fingers, for example; image-based AI also requires very descriptive language.
“It’s one thing to look at a picture and like it,” Browning-Samoni said, “but to understand why you like it and describe that about it and to have something generate … is very difficult.”
Two classes used the technology after learning about AI ethics, while two sections used AI before receiving ethics instruction. The classes that received ethics training beforehand were better at discerning issues such as racial and gender biases and stereotypes in their project research and development than those who received instruction afterward, Browning-Samoni said.
“I think it’s important for students to come in understanding that AI is built on the information that’s put into it,” Browning-Samoni said, “and that there can be biases in that information that it’s drawing from.”

Leslie Browning-Samoni is using her fashion merchandising classroom as a laboratory for AI pedagogy. Photo by Rodger Mallison
Both sets of students struggled with issues surrounding copyright and ownership of information and images generated through AI. Though AI learns as prompts are refined, it still pulls from online resources.
In her research, Browning-Samoni found students “get upset if their own work is copied or someone has something similar to it” but sometimes struggle to understand that “when they take their ideas from other people’s work, and you can see those ideas in that work, that you have to be really careful not to begin infringing on that work.”
The most important takeaway from Browning-Samoni’s work, Eike said, is “awareness for educators that addressing bias and ethical literacy within the fashion curriculum is key to our students’ success upon entry into the workforce. Her research provides a structure other educators can use in their classrooms to use AI in fashion.”
Browning-Samoni said she will continue her exploration of generative AI’s best uses in the fashion merchandising classroom.
“I plan to follow up to assess whether students are entering with a greater understanding of AI usage and the ethical considerations surrounding it, as AI continues to evolve and become more integrated into the tools utilized in their coursework,” she said. “I hope that publishing this research will provide valuable insights for educators, highlighting the importance of incorporating ethical guidance in the use of AI.”
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