The Future Where AI Knows a You That You Don't Yet Know
Written by Kenji Tanaka
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AI, Fashion, and the Meaning of Choosing for Yourself
In fashion, knowing what you like is not always as easy as it sounds.
You may know the colors you like, the silhouettes you prefer, the fabrics that appeal to you, or the clothes you feel suit you. Some people can explain these things clearly. Others only discover what they like when they actually see a garment or put it on. And sometimes, we discover a preference we did not even know we had, simply because we encountered something unexpected.
I don't think the biggest change AI will bring to fashion is simply making it easier to find clothes. A much more significant change may be this:
AI may come to understand what we like before we understand it ourselves.
From Searching to Being Suggested
Until recently, the internet required us to act first.
We searched for a tailor. We searched for a jacket. We searched for a restaurant. We searched for somewhere to travel.
We entered words into Google or another search engine, compared what appeared, and eventually made the decision ourselves.
In other words:
We ask → we search → we look at the information → we decide.
AI is already beginning to change this structure.
Rather than simply presenting search results, AI can understand intent through conversation, combine different pieces of information, and make suggestions based on the individual. And perhaps the next step is even more interesting:
AI makes the suggestion before we ask the question.
“Perhaps This Is What You Like?”
Even now, there are moments when talking with AI feels strangely familiar.
You may have had a vague sense of something for a long time without being able to put it into words. Then, through a conversation, AI brings together things you have said and presents them back to you:
“Perhaps what you are looking for is something like this.”
And you think:
“Yes. That's it.”
It is not necessarily that AI has created a completely new idea. It may simply have found something that was already somewhere inside you and given it a form you could recognize.
This is already beginning to happen in our conversations with AI.
But what happens if AI becomes capable of doing this over a much longer period of time, with far greater accuracy?
The clothes we buy. The clothes we actually wear. The things we buy but rarely wear. The images we save. The images we spend time looking at. The colors we repeatedly choose. The places we return to. And the things we have explicitly said we like.
Then there are our work, travel, surroundings, lifestyle, and countless other choices.
AI could connect information that, to us, appears unrelated. It might find a pattern in our choices that we ourselves have never noticed.
Someone may think they prefer classic clothing, yet repeatedly choose pieces that add a slightly contemporary element to that classic foundation. Someone may think they prefer simplicity, yet consistently choose garments with one unexpected detail.
To that person, each choice may simply feel like something they “happened to like.” To AI, they may form a pattern.
And AI might one day say:
“You may think you prefer this kind of clothing. But looking at your choices over time, you seem to respond more strongly to something like this.”
That is more than product recommendation.
It is a form of self-understanding.
It means AI may discover something that has always existed within us, but that we had not yet recognized ourselves.
What Comes Next?
Today, if you say,
“I want a jacket,”
AI can help you find one.
But in the future, it might say:
“You don't actually need another jacket. Looking at your wardrobe and what you have coming up next month, this is the kind of garment that would be most useful to you.”
And perhaps it could go even further.
“You may not have noticed this yet, but looking at your recent choices and the changes in your life, it seems that your preferences themselves are beginning to shift. The next thing you are likely to choose may be something quite different from what you have chosen before.”
It may begin to anticipate not only what we want, but how our desires are changing before we become aware of the change ourselves.
Eventually, AI could generate the design itself, adjust it to our body, select the fabric, and even determine how it should be made. At that point, AI would no longer simply be a search engine or an online shopping assistant. It could become something closer to a personal buyer, stylist, designer, and creative director combined.
And That Raises an Interesting Question
This would undoubtedly be convenient.
But there is something I find interesting about that future:
Will we eventually stop asking ourselves what we actually like?
What do we want to eat? Where do we want to go? What do we want to wear? What music do we want to listen to?
AI could answer all of these questions almost immediately. And its answers might be remarkably accurate.
“This suits you.”
“You will probably like this.”
“This is the best choice for you.”
If we hear those answers often enough, perhaps there will be less reason to make the decision ourselves.
But Choosing Has Meaning
Choosing clothes is not simply about finding the optimal product. Sometimes it begins with something much less rational:
“This might be too bold for me. But for some reason, I keep thinking about it. I'll try it.”
And that moment can be where a new preference begins.
Something we initially did not like may become something we love after seeing it again and again. Sometimes another person introduces us to something, and only then do we realize that it was actually our taste all along.
In other words,
we do not necessarily know our preferences completely from the beginning.
We discover them through choosing. And I think that process itself becomes part of who we are.
What If AI Knows Us Better Than We Know Ourselves?
If AI eventually becomes better at understanding our choices than we are, something rather strange may happen.
We tend to believe that we know ourselves better than anyone else. But we do not actually remember every choice we have made.
AI might.
It could remember what we chose in the past, which colors we repeatedly returned to, which designs made us stop and look longer, and what we bought once but almost never wore.
More importantly, it could connect those small choices over a period of years. It might find a consistency in our behavior that we ourselves have overlooked.
There is an interesting reversal here.
We may think we are teaching AI what we like. But one day, AI may be the one telling us:
“You may think this is who you are. But when I look at what you have actually chosen, there seems to be something slightly different.”
If that happens, perhaps the more interesting question will no longer be whether AI can understand human creativity.
It will be:
“What would it mean to have something that knows more about you than you know about yourself?”
Fashion Makes This Question Especially Interesting
In fashion, what is “optimal” and what we actually like are not always the same thing.
For example, the idea that vertical stripes make you look taller is one of the many familiar rules of fashion. Even if AI can tell us which choices are likely to be the most flattering, we can still say:
“No. I like this one.”
A color that may not be the most flattering. A silhouette AI did not recommend. A garment that may not be the optimal choice for anyone else, but somehow feels right to us.
And sometimes, there are choices for which we can only say:
“I don’t know why I like it. I simply know that I do — and I’m not sure even AI could completely explain it.”
Perhaps these choices will become even more meaningful as AI becomes better at understanding us.
Because the more accurately AI can predict what we are likely to choose, the more interesting it becomes when we choose something else simply because we want to.
When Choosing for Yourself Becomes a Luxury
In a world where AI can optimize almost every decision for us, perhaps choosing for yourself will become a luxury.
Being asked why you chose something and not having a rational answer. Simply knowing that you wanted it. Choosing the thing you want rather than the thing AI considers optimal.
The more intelligent AI becomes, the more meaning such choices might carry.
So, Will AI Replace Us?
I don't know.
AI may eventually discover our desires before we do, make suggestions before we ask, and ultimately create the designs themselves.
So perhaps the real question is not:
“Can AI become more creative than humans?”
A more important question may be:
“When AI becomes capable of understanding us this accurately, will we still want to keep trying to understand ourselves?”
Fashion is not simply about what we wear.
It is about discovering what we like. Sometimes discovering preferences we did not know we had. And, through those choices, gradually shaping who we are.
As AI evolves, the meaning of that process may change.
Or perhaps, quite the opposite:
It may become one of the most valuable things that remains distinctly human.
The future in which AI knows things about us that we do not yet know ourselves may not be very far away.
And when that future arrives, perhaps the question left to us will not be,
“How well does AI understand me?”
but rather,
“How deeply do I want to understand myself?”