The right garment can make you invisible, at least to AI face recognition software. So-called adversarial clothing is specially designed to thwart AI’s ability to identify the wearer. As people become increasingly discontent with AI video surveillance, anti-AI fashion could soon get its time in the spotlight.
Outfitted anonymously
Adversarial clothing uses “special patterns and materials made to confuse AI facial recognition software,” said Inc. This may include “unique patterns that can cause AI to misidentify people as animals or objects” or “infrared reflective gear that blocks faces out entirely on camera, as if a bright light was shining on them.” The trend comes at a time when “unlike traditional CCTV, modern computer vision systems can identify faces, follow individuals across cameras and search footage at scale,” said The Guardian.
Video surveillance using artificial intelligence is “worth over $4 billion in 2026” and is “expected to surpass $10 billion” by 2032, said Inc. Companies such as Ring and Flock Safety have incorporated AI into their products to identify people and objects. The problem with AI video surveillance is that “citizens don’t have the possibility in the physical world to opt out,” Rachele Didero, the founder and CEO of the Italian adversarial clothing brand Cap_able, said to the Mozilla Foundation. “In the digital space we can say yes or no to cookies. In the physical world, we don’t have this option.”
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Adversarial clothing “wins on many levels,” Nick Tidball, the co-founder of the clothing brand Vollebak, said to The Guardian. Along with the “practicality of protection, it’s fashionable and fun.” It also “makes a powerful, public statement that many are in agreement with.”
The trend exists in an “interesting area of tension,” Nicole Scheller, the designer and cofounder of the adversarial clothing brand Urban Privacy, said to Euronews. “Surveillance systems are all about capturing identities, while fashion is about expressing identity outwards.” Adversarial fashion can “protect identity and at the same time raise awareness of the issue, because it is so eye-catching.”
To AI or not to AI
While adversarial clothing is designed to avoid AI facial recognition, at the rate at which the technology is advancing, no design can completely guarantee that you won’t be detected. “Controlled testing against one object-detection model can’t prove a garment will defeat facial recognition in public,” said Digital Trends. “Lighting and camera position can alter the result, while newer software may learn to ignore patterns that once caused trouble.” Additionally, “if such clothing genuinely proved effective, it could get political very quickly,” Tidball said to The Guardian. “Then this type of clothing could find itself banned.”
While some companies are working on anti-AI clothing, others, including luxury brands, are embracing AI in their design process. It is predicted that the AI fashion market will be worth “$60 billion by 2034, with annual growth rates nearing 40%,” said Vogue. “Brands across the sector are integrating generative tools into both creative and production workflows.” Such tools “offer clear advantages: speed, efficiency and reduced costs.” But they also “sit in direct opposition to the principles that have long underpinned luxury value: time, craftsmanship and human expertise.”
The use of AI by luxury brands could help open the door for more adversarial clothing brands. “New generations are increasingly afraid of AI and concerned for their privacy,” Didero said to The Guardian. “The mainstream is quickly coming up behind them, helped by the fact that bigger companies will see the potential for profit and will push the trend into the popular, public domain, changing the way we dress on a large scale.”
