Sally Shin is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Raive, a new foundation AI company for the multimedia industries. Shin and her team at Raive are partnering with the CFDA to help designers and brands navigate this exciting new enterprise.

Whether you’re a small brand or large, Shin shares how AI can support your business goals. 

How did you get into the AI Space?

It was serendipitous. I spent the first part of my career in media, entertainment and in storytelling as a journalist. 

I met my co-founders through an investor who was doing due diligence on the company. Jonathan Raiman, Raive co-founder and Pablo Ducru, Raive co-founder & president, had the vision to build multimedia foundation models where it was more personal, high quality and IP safe – a tool that enables creativity but also protects the most valuable assets. As someone who worked with musicians and talent, this vision resonated with me. 

How would you explain what generative AI is to those who are not familiar with the technology?

Generative AI refers to models that take an input (data) and learns concepts, patterns and information from that dataset to predict and generate new content, based on what it knows. This can take all forms from text to image, video, audio and music. 

How is AI being used by fashion brands? And how do you see it benefiting their businesses?

According to McKinsey, generative AI could add $150 billion – $275 billion to the apparel, fashion and luxury sectors’ operating profits in the next 3 to 5 years. Brands can increase topline by 40 percent if they add personalization. We are seeing AI being used in many ways including predicting trends, optimizing supply chain and customer support. 

But what’s really exciting is how multimedia AI models like Raive can unlock new layers of creativity. This starts from virtual try-ons to design inspirations, or highly personal and targeted campaigns by generating large volumes and high quality content. AI enables fashion houses to interact with customers in a whole new way that is not only personalized and instant but more cost effective.

Designers are starting to use mood boards and inspirations to iterate on ideas, with AI as the co-creator. You can now encapsulate your own style into an AI model, and customize for both internal and external use cases, and even collect royalties.  

Can brands of all sizes benefit from this technology?

There are easy ways to unlock use cases of AI, starting with LLMs. An easy plug-in allows small brands to now have full customer support at a fraction of the cost. 

But the real beauty of AI in fashion is it enables brands to accelerate content development at scale. With Raive, you can start unlocking easier, more creative and cheaper ways to generate assets, from marketing campaigns to new ways to interact with your customers. Imagine using an image model with your brand SKU, your latest line and the correct color palette. The future is here.

Bigger brands can also build their own foundation model, where we can train using years of archives, pull from past seasons and design the next season through inspiration from over the years.  

How do you see AI evolving over the next decade?

The speed at which artificial intelligence is evolving will unlock so many different opportunities, especially when it comes to fashion.

AI models are outputting higher quality content and will continue to generate ultra realistic visual campaigns while the cost of production through AI will continue to go down. 

Soon, customers can design their own line of clothing based on the styles of their favorite brands and have that unique clothing customized to your size and to your doorstep. Companies are tackling all parts of the value chain, from shipping to on demand custom sizing and designing that is all being made much more efficient with AI.  

If you’re interested in learning more, please register for the Raive webinar – AI and It’s Impact on March, hosted on March 27th at 12pm EDT, here.