Miami Fashion Week is officially in full swing, and the fashion crowd is flocking to the Freedom Tower at Miami Dade College to see the new collections of local and international designers presenting their new collections.
But recently, Miami Fashion Week began offering designers the opportunity to create AI-generated fashion shows as a way to be part of the fashion hub, presenting it as a more affordable option than a runway presentation — and even creating a new award category that will recognize “virtual shows, digital creativity, and cutting-edge technology,” according to the MFW website.
This past May, the organization hosted the inaugural Virtual Fashion Awards to celebrate the intersection of high fashion and digital innovation, where designers Yas Gonzalez, Vero Diaz, and Sebastian Gray were recognized for their use of AI to create virtual runway shows.
AI garments, worn by AI models, walking down an AI runway, at an AI location, witnessed by AI spectators were shown as a video during the ceremony. It’s all a far cry from its origins, when designers like Carolina Herrera and Oscar De La Renta would show as guest designers.
“This industry is too hands-on, too visual, too personal. Every collection a designer creates, no matter who they are or where they are in the world, is deeply personal,” said Beth Sobol, the founder of Miami Fashion Week, in an interview with CommunityWire. “To take that away cuts at the very core of a designer’s creativity. That’s what fashion is. That’s what this industry is all about: personal creativity.”
There is a level of novelty that allows creatives to expand beyond what is available.
“It’s the freedom that gives us the possibility to dream,” designer Andrea Salazar of SETA Apparel told the Miami Herald in May.
Artificial Intelligence can help visualize a dream, but it cannot replace bringing the vision to reality.
“AI, by design, has no ideas of its own. It can approximate but innovation requires an actual point of view. Any brand flirting with AI should be embarrassed to call what it is making or putting on a runway anything other than derivative,” said fashion and culture journalist Brett F. Braley-Palko.
In a sense, these designers based in Miami are able to somewhat get away with the use of AI, given that the fashion industry at large generally pays more attention to the major fashion capitals like Paris, Milan, London and New York – and even emerging fashion cities like Copenhagen, Madrid and Shanghai. Miami gets a quick glance at most and is able to prevail unscathed.
Designer Alexis Mabille presented his spring 2026 couture show during Haute Couture Week in Paris, only there was no actual show; the designer presented a collection entirely generated by Artificial Intelligence. The designer was met with immense backlash because Haute Couture specifically is reserved for art of dressmaking that is deeply rooted in human craftsmanship.
Conde Nast held their annual Vogue World fashion show, a runway presentation that takes place every year in a new destination. This September, however, the presentation was heavily criticized for its sponsorship of Meta AI and a prolefeed performance by two robots on the runway. Designers like Muiccia Prada, Alessandro Michele looked unamused, while various critics had plenty to say about the stunt. Few of them positive.
But local journalists, creatives and influencers in Miami fear that talking negatively about the use of AI at Miami Fashion Week will result in getting blacklisted or will affect their preexisting friendship with a designer.
“Journalists have a responsibility to call this out. There is a growing closeness between legacy media and major AI companies, and I worry that some writers are already future-proofing themselves by avoiding criticism of the technology,” added Braley-Palko, who writes for publications including GQ and Forbes.
For professional models, this trend is deeply concerning.
“I've walked for Miami Fashion Week before. I've walked for Miami Swim Week before,” said one model who asked not to be named, for fear of no longer booking jobs as a result of speaking about it publicly. “When someone uses an AI-generated model, they're taking away that modeling gig from a real girl that needs to pay her rent. It's also scary every time I hear about deepfakes. What if someone wants to use my face but doesn't want to pay my rates or go through my mother agency?"
Designers have been using AI to create content for social media as well.
Designer Giannina Azar is a recurring name in the Miami Fashion Week schedule, and well known for making couture-level creations that have been worn by artists like Beyoncé and Christina Aguilera. Take a scroll though her Instagram and you will find multiple AI -generated reels of models wearing her creations. One that stands out is of a red bird resembling a phoenix flying through the air, eventually landing on a red carpet and transforming into a sultry model wearing a gown heavily embellished with feathers and crystals.
Miami-based fashion brand Alexis recently released a light-hearted and fun video on social media surrounding the making of a dress: a side-to-side comparison of AI attempting (and failing) to make a dress vs. real human designers actually making a dress. And while the dress itself is tangible and of great quality, the irony of it all is in the scenes where human designers and seamstresses appear working on the dress seem to be AI generated as well. “Just kidding, AI could never,” reads the caption. It’s a statement that would be stronger if only the content itself was not AI generated.
It is important to note that these garments exist in a tangible form. They physically exist and were made by talented designers, so really, there is no reason for the use of AI in the context of a fashion presentation, says Sobol, the Miami Fashion Week founder.
"It does nothing for the audience. It does nothing for the buyers. It does nothing for anybody in the industry,” Sobol said.
The fashion industry is one of the world’s major contributors to environmental pollution. The global clothing and textile industry is responsible for approximately 92 million tons of clothing and footwear that end up in landfills. Now add AI water usage into the equation, particularly the amount of water used to power and cool the data centers. Estimates suggest AI’s global water footprint was between 312 and 763 billion liters in 2025 alone.
Once a designer turns to AI, questions can arise about their creative involvement: where the human touch ends, and where the artificial intelligence begins. In the context of a fashion show, this also brings up questions on whether AI supports creativity, or if it simply produces entertaining novelty content that lacks a deeper concept.
