3rd International Symposium on AI in Fashion

Welcome to the 3rd International Symposium on AI in Fashion 2026

Ethics for Fashion AI: Navigating the Techno-Sustainability Paradox

Dates, time and location

11 June 2026 (online)
Time: TBC

12 June 2026
East Bank, London College of Fashion, UAL
105 Carpenter's Road, Stratford, E20 2AR
Time: TBC

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of everyday practice across the fashion system, from design and forecasting to production and supply chains. As adoption grows, so does the need to examine the ethical implications of how these systems are built, used, and governed. This year’s symposium focuses on how ethical frameworks can support responsible Fashion AI, with attention to sustainability, creativity, labour, accountability, and cultural representation.

Hosted by the FAIREE Hub at London College of Fashion, UAL, the symposium brings together researchers, educators, industry practitioners, and policymakers to share research, case studies, and critical perspectives. Across two days - online and in person - the programme will explore both the opportunities and the risks of AI in fashion, and encourage practical, cross-disciplinary discussion about how to move forward responsibly.

Whether you work in research, education, technology, design, or business, the symposium offers a space to exchange ideas, test assumptions, and contribute to more transparent and ethical approaches to Fashion AI.

Call for Papers

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integral to Fashion, the ethical dimensions of its design, deployment, and impact mandate urgent attention. The Third International FAIREE Symposium 2026 focuses on Ethics for Fashion AI, critically examining how ethical frameworks can guide responsible innovation within the global fashion ecosystem.  The symposium invites reflection on how AI reshapes creativity, labour, sustainability, and cultural expression, and how ethical principles such as fairness, accountability, inclusivity, and transparency can mitigate the techno-sustainability paradox that challenges today’s fashion industry.

Context and Rationale

The rapid proliferation of Fashion AI (FAI) offers both opportunities and dilemmas. While predictive analytics, generative design tools, and virtual sampling promise efficiency and sustainability, their ethical blind spots threaten to amplify existing inequities, creative homogenization, and environmental exploitation (Giovanola et al. 2023; Du & Chunyan, 2021).  Algorithmic fashion design risks narrowing aesthetic diversity by replacing human experimentation with data-driven uniformity (Särmäkari & Vänskä, 2022; Huang et al. 2024; Rockett et al. 2025). Moreover, sustainability gains from AI-driven supply chain management and 3D prototyping are often accessible only to digitally advanced enterprises (Murugesan et al. 2024), while fast algorithmic design cycles paradoxically accelerate overproduction and waste (Sharma & Sharma, 2024). Even technological “solutions” like blockchain may obscure rather than reveal ethical complexities, offering an illusion of accountability that can conceal labour exploitation or cultural appropriation (Sangal et al. 2025). Unchecked ethics washing undermines trust and damages the credibility of fashion brands operating across global, interconnected supply chains.

Beyond production, AI-driven automation raises profound ethical concerns around the displacement of designers and artisans, as well as the erosion of creative authorship. Generative algorithms capable of producing derivative designs from copyrighted works challenge the moral and legal definition of artistic ownership. Simultaneously, biased data inputs perpetuate discriminatory standards of beauty, body type, and identity (Daniels & Gupta, 2025), while opaque data practices threaten consumer privacy and autonomy (Gonçalves et al. 2024). Addressing these challenges requires a shared commitment to Ethics for Fashion AI — an interdisciplinary effort uniting technologists, designers, policymakers, and philosophers to envision AI systems that respect human values, creativity, and ecological balance.

Themes and Topics of Interest

We welcome multidisciplinary conceptual, empirical, case based, industry reports completed or work-in-progress submissions that advance ethical discourse and practice in AI-driven fashion. Topics include (but are not limited to):

• Ethical frameworks for responsible Fashion AI
• Algorithmic fairness, transparency, and accountability in design and production
• Cultural representation, inclusivity, and bias in fashion datasets
• The ethics of automation, creativity, and artistic ownership
• Privacy, surveillance, and data ethics in fashion personalization
• Ethical governance and regulation of Fashion AI systems
• Human-AI collaboration and augmented creativity
• Ethics of digital labour, intellectual property, and AI-authored works
• Techno-sustainability paradox: AI, waste, and overproduction
• Brand integrity, reputation, and ethics washing in AI-driven fashion
• Global justice, decolonial perspectives, and the digital divide in Fashion AI
• Educational frameworks for ethical fashion technology

Submission Guidelines

Authors are invited to submit extended abstracts of approximately 1,000 words with up to six keywords, in Arial 12-point font as a pdf document using justified format for the paragraphs and APA style for referencing with names and affiliation(s) of author(s). Submissions should clearly articulate relevant:

• Research purpose and objectives
• Novelty and significance
• Methodology and theoretical grounding
• Key findings or anticipated contributions
• Ethical implications and impact

We encourage contributions in the format explained in the next section, from academics, practitioners, policymakers, and doctoral researchers engaging with Fashion AI through ethical, creative, or critical lenses. Accepted papers will receive further information about guidelines for presenting their work.

Key Dates

• Conference Dates: 11 and 12 June 2026
• Abstract Submission Opens: 20 February 2026
• Abstract Submission Deadline: 10 April 2026
• Notification of Acceptance: 20 April 2026
• Early Bird Registration Deadline: 1 May 2026
• Register by: 25 May 2026

Publication Opportunities

Abstracts submitted for oral or poster presentation will be published as Proceedings of the FAIREE Symposium 2026. Based on the quality of research, a selection of papers will be invited for full submission of their paper to be considered either as a book chapter for an edited book or as a research article by a journal. The full papers selected for invitation to submit will go through the review process specified by editors of respective academic outlet.

Registration Fees

Presenter

Early bird registration: £200
Regular registration: £250

PhD student

Early bird registration: £150
Regular registration: £200

Submissions

How to submit

All submissions must be made electronically via Microsoft CMT; email submissions will not be accepted.

You will need to set up a Microsoft CMT account before you can submit your paper.

• Create your account
• Author submission form

Symposium Director

Dr Suraksha Gupta, Professor of Marketing, Fashion Business School and Head, FAIREE, UAL

Organising Committee

Dr Satya Banerjee, Senior Lecturer and Course Leader, Fashion  Business School, UAL
Dr Arnab Banerjee, Lecturer, Fashion Business School, UAL
Andy Lee, Learning and Teaching Innovation Lead, School of Media and Communications, UAL
Mikha Mekler, Associate Dean Knowledge Exchange, School of Design and Technology, UAL

Contact us

Accommodation guide

Hotels in Stratford

The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.