At the same time, independent fashion brands are facing many of the same structural pressures: rising production costs, an early-stage funding drought, and growing competition from conglomerates with deeper pockets and proprietary technology. But so far, fashion’s AI partnerships have largely focused on applications rather than co-creation. L’Oréal is working with OpenAI to develop AI-powered beauty experiences, while some brands like Moncler, Valentino, Gucci, and Victoria Beckham have experimented with generative imagery and digital twin virtual try-on. But much of the industry’s AI conversation remains framed around efficiency, authenticity, and creative risk. What’s still missing are purpose-built AI tools for fashion’s own creative workflows — and the strategic partnerships to build them well.
Queisser points to how A24’s deal with Google could represent a blueprint for industries like fashion to move beyond the AI resistance and experimentation phases. “Industries resist these tools until the cost of resistance exceeds the cost of adoption. Both ends of the film business [both major Hollywood studios and indie studios] have now reached that threshold,” he says.
A question of cultural cachet — and taste
Google has historically been the go-to for developer workflow tools, but now, it’s clear that AI lab DeepMind is broadening its scope.
“The collaboration pairs a world-leading research lab with the industry’s most filmmaker-forward studio to help artists develop new workflows and techniques,” Google said in a statement announcing the collaboration. “This ensures the tools of the future are shaped by the creators who use them.” While Google could have partnered with any major studio for this research partnership, instead, it chose A24, a studio with outsized cultural clout.
At a time where Big Tech is obsessed with the question of taste, and increasingly leaning on fashion’s playbook to gain mass adoption of its AI tools, this decision sends an important signal to luxury brands.
First, by partnering with Google, A24 is able to exercise cultural influence and shape how AI tools are made for the film industry. It also gets a say in what Google can access, where IP experts say that sitting outside the AI conversation can pose a bigger commercial risk to creatives’ IPs. “The single largest pain point across both Hollywood and luxury fashion marketing is unregulated copyright scraping,” says Deborah Harpur, founder and CEO of AI talent licensing company FanClub AI.
“The partnership moves the conversation away from standard generative models toward building intentional, creator-led infrastructure, because it establishes strict guardrails,” Harpur adds. She points to how workflows, storyboarding, and project pre-visualization are currently where filmmakers are most readily adopting AI, because they offer cost efficiencies without risking the underlying creative IP. “It makes complete sense that a tastemaker studio like A24 would leave its core content library out of an initial tech partnership,’ she continues. “Independent studios are fiercely protective of their back catalogs, because protecting a multi-billion-dollar portfolio from copyright infringement carries an immediate, high-stakes ROI.”
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