ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Google Photos has a new Wardrobe feature.
- It gave me hilariously bad results.
- Between my wife and me, it found very few options.
There’s no shortage of AI try-on tools that let you build a digital closet and see how you look in different outfits, so I was initially not that interested when I saw that Google Photos had introduced one of its own. After giving it a test run, I found I was right to be skeptical.
The Wardrobe feature for Google Photos produced some hilariously bad results, and that was the best part about the whole experience.
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Here’s how the feature works: Google uses AI to automatically create a digital wardrobe based on pieces of clothing you’ve worn in your Google Photos. When your “closet” is ready, you can filter by category (tops, bottoms, hats, jewelry, etc.), mix and match clothing items to create outfits, and (sortof) try them on to see how they look.
To see for yourself, go to the Google Photos app (it doesn’t show up on the desktop version), tap Collections, and look for Wardrobe. Tap “Build Your Wardrobe” and wait, a process that Google says might take a few hours.
A first run fail, but then some promise
Despite the warning that it might take hours, my wardrobe was ready in less than 5 minutes.
When I tried on my first outfit, I let out a cackle that brought my dog running to see what was happening. Photos had created my requested outfit, but had inexplicably broken my arm. Along with the basic black outfit I chose, I was shown with my right arm in a sling.
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I’ve never broken a bone in my life, so Photos didn’t get that idea from a picture. Google notes that “Results may be unexpected,” and I’ve never seen a truer statement. A tap of “Regenerate” healed my arm, but it was a strangely hilarious first outcome, and I can’t fathom why that’s even a possibility.
However, I had just been chatting with my ZDNET editor about whether anyone really wants AI try-on tools and how they often don’t work. On the chance that Google’s faux broken bone was a thinly veiled threat from an AI that had just heard me criticize it and has thousands of pictures of me and my precise location, I apologize, and I assure everyone your new tool is marvelously useful.
I have a limited closet, but I can be a pirate
I quickly found my biggest frustration with the app: how few clothing items it pulled. I have a decade’s worth of pictures (nearly 3,000 that I’m in, Google Photos says), and Photos managed to find just six pairs of pants, three hats, two t-shirts, a jacket, two pairs of shoes, a pair of sunglasses, a jacket, and a pirate coat I wore for a themed night on a cruise last year. Most of my clothing replicated well, with logos and words looking exactly true to life, but some things turned into garbled AI text.
There’s no way to ask Google to reassess or to look more deeply. You get what you get.
Google said that it only pulls photos from the past four years, but even as a work-from-home tech writer who only has my dog to impress with my dress, I can assure you I’ve worn more than a couple of t-shirts since 2022, and that my 17th-century style pirate coat that appeared in three photos is boxed up in the attic.
My next trials weren’t as bad. I was able to compile several outfits from my available clothing, and the AI produced a pretty good replica of me wearing them — even my pirate coat. It was fun mixing and matching what limited items I had, but the novelty quickly wore off.
Hours later, a bare closet
My wife’s closet was a similar story. When the app took longer than 30 minutes to build her closet, I thought it might be working as intended. When it took three hours to build, I was mentally preparing to write about how good her results were.
Then her wardrobe was ready. All four items.
After combing through thousands of pictures, Google Photos pulled up two necklaces, one top, and one hat. Despite her wearing dozens of different outfits in the photos I scrolled through, Google took more than three hours to find a handful and then, helpfully, gathered them to produce one outfit.
I can see some potential in this concept. It reproduced the items it found well, and the outfit combinations gave me a glimpse of how something might look. But overall, it was just another example of why AI try-on tools still need a lot of work.
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