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 allow you to build a digital wardrobe and see how you look in different outfits, so I wasn’t that interested at first when I saw that Google Photos had introduced one of its own. After taking a test, I found I was rightly skeptical.
The wardrobe feature for Google Photos produced some hilariously bad results, and that was the best part of the whole experience.
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Here’s how the feature works: Google uses AI to automatically create a digital wardrobe based on clothes you’ve worn in your Google Photos. Once your “wardrobe” is complete, you can filter by category (tops, bottoms, hats, jewelry, etc.), mix and match clothing items to create outfits, and (sort of) try them on to see how they look.
To see for yourself, go to the Google Photos app (it won’t appear on the desktop version), tap Collections and look for Wardrobe. Tap “Build Your Wardrobe” and wait, a process that Google says could take several hours.
A first run is lacking, but then some promises
Despite the warning that it could take hours, my wardrobe was finished in less than 5 minutes.
When I tried on my first outfit, I let out a cackle that sent my dog running to see what was happening. Photos had created my requested outfit, but inexplicably broke my arm. Along with the basic black outfit I chose, I was shown with my right arm in a snake.
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I’ve never broken a bone in my life, so photos don’t have that idea of a photo. Google notes that “results may be unpredictable,” and I’ve never seen a true statement. A tap of “Regenerate” healed my arm, but it was a strangely funny first result, and I can’t imagine why that’s even a possibility.
However, I was just talking to my ZDNET editor about whether anyone really wants AI try-on tools and how they often don’t work. On the off chance that Google’s faux broken bone was a thinly veiled threat from an AI that had just heard me criticize and has thousands of pictures of me in my precise location, I apologize, and I assure everyone your new tool is wonderfully useful.
I have a limited wardrobe, but I can become a pirate
I quickly found my biggest frustration with the app: how few garments it pulled. I have a decade’s worth of pictures (almost 3,000 of them, says Google Photos), and in photos I’ve only managed to find 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 on a cruise last year. Most of my clothes replicated well, with logos and words that looked exactly true to life, but a few things were turned into crazy AI text.
There is no way to ask Google to re-evaluate or look deeper. You get what you get.
Google said it only pulls photos from the last 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 that I’ve worn more than a few t-shirts since 2022, and that my 17
My next studies were not so bad. I was able to compile several outfits from my available clothing, and the AI produced a pretty good replica of me – including my pirate cloak. It was fun to mix and match what limited items I had, but the novelty wore off quickly.
Hours later, a bare wardrobe
My wife’s closet was a similar story. If the app took more than 30 minutes to build her wardrobe, I thought it might work as intended. As it took three hours to build, I mentally prepared myself to write about how good their results were.
Then her wardrobe was ready. All four elements.
After combing through thousands of images, Google Photos pulled up two necklaces, a top and a hat. Despite their dozens of different outfits in the photos I scrolled through, Google took more than three hours to find a handful and then, helpfully, collected them to produce one outfit.
I can see some potential in this concept. It reproduces the elements that they found good, and the outfit combinations gave me a glimpse of what something could look like. But overall, it was just another example of why AI try-on tools still need a lot of work.
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