Last year, AI investment reached unprecedented highs. Nvidia became the world’s first $5 trillion company, the biggest AI players like Meta and Google raised their AI spend from previous forecasts, and OpenAI placed itself at the center of a web of multi-million-dollar deals focused on accelerating AI development.
In 2026, all this spending is likely to yield new products and features that will impact how fashion brands sell online. At the same time, governments are racing to catch up with the pace of development and introduce laws to regulate the sector. Approaches to AI regulation are expected to become even more fragmented across geographies, which experts say places the onus on brands to establish their own AI guardrails and values, fast.
This includes fashion’s approach to using AI models for creative outputs. Expect a bifurcation in approaches to AI for creative in 2026, where brands either reject the tech altogether, or lean into the surreal look it can create.
As they navigate this rapid technological evolution, brands will also lean into consumer tech products that prioritize human connection and warmth. On the consumer side, experts say we’ll likely see last year’s fledgling trend of tech products worn as accessories grow in 2026.
Here are the biggest fashion-tech trends to expect in 2026.
Advertising will enter a new AI era
This year, expect pay-to-play advertising in commerce to change shape, as consumers increasingly choose AI search for their shopping journeys. ChatGPT maker OpenAI restructured to a for-profit business late last year, with experts predicting advertising revenue as an inevitable part of the platform’s near future.
Meanwhile, pay-to-play ads are an established part of rivals Google and Amazon’s business models. In late 2025, Amazon launched sponsored prompts within its AI assistant Rufus, where brands can bid on follow-up questions within consumers’ AI conversations as they shop. If, say, a customer is searching for a leather handbag, a brand can pay for the AI assistant to suggest its product and describe it according to the label’s own product description, in response to certain questions.
“The future of ads is already here with what Amazon has launched,” says AI search expert Max Sinclair. He predicts that in 2026, other AI platforms will follow in its footsteps with chat ads rather than traditional visual ads in sidebars. Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has always been openly wary of balancing advertising with preserving consumer trust. A model like Amazon’s could be seen to be at odds with the personalised recommendations that the AI giant promoted with the release of its “shopping research” feature in late 2025. One thing we do know is that when the company does introduce ads in the near future, they’ll be what Altman has said he deems “thoughtful and tasteful.”
AI slop as a fashion marketing play
Consumers and creatives alike are wrestling with what ‘real’ means in an AI-enhanced world. In 2025, nowhere was this felt stronger than in creative campaigns. Where brands began to experiment with AI-generated images and video, they were mostly met with a social media backlash criticizing their work as “AI slop”. Across early experiments, the campaigns that drew the most criticism seemed to be the ones that were the most realistic, or leaned on archival imagery, where people argued the tech was unnecessary and made humans seem obsolete.
Cue a new trend where brands began to purposefully lean into the surreal as a way of approaching AI-generated imagery. Against a backdrop of rapid technological change and sociopolitical unrest, fashion brands’ marketing strategies were already leaning into the surreal to offer consumers a form of escapism. In 2026, creatives say we’ll see more brands leaning into the so-called “AI slop” aesthetic as a smart way to play on the tech’s entropic tendencies, leaning into an AI-generated aesthetic to gain attention and cut through saturated feeds.
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“The spike is inevitable, because novelty always gets embraced before it gets understood, and AI’s current flaws feel like an easy shortcut to attention,” says Shaun Singh, CEO and founder of trend forecaster Death to Stock. He predicts that moving into the medium term, this aesthetic will become ubiquitous and begin to lose its edge, as consumer fatigue sets in.
“The same glitchy language that feels provocative now will start to feel interchangeable, and brands will realize they cannot build identity on the same surreal vocabulary everyone else is generating,” Singh says, forecasting a shift back to human craft, as imperfection and tactility once again become differentiators.
“In the long term, AI will survive in the tool kit, but as an accelerant rather than a foundation,” Singh continues. “Brands will use its volatility for campaign-level provocation and experimental bursts, while relying on physical sets, handcrafted marks, and human authorship for credibility and longevity. AI will provide the chaos, but human creativity will carry the meaning, because the future of branding isn’t one replacing the other, it’s a division of labor between short-term shock and long-term trust.”
New wearables will hit the market
Meta dominated the smart glasses conversation in 2025. It released three models of its Ray-Ban and Oakley Meta smart glasses; hired senior designers from Apple to lead a wearables-focused creative studio; shifted resources from its metaverse team into AI glasses and wearables; and acquired Limitless, a startup that makes AI-powered “all-listening” pendants, suggesting a future move into other form factors.
Rival Google also capped off the year by confirming its first AI-powered, audio-only smart glasses will hit the market in 2026, following its $150 million deal with Gentle Monster, Warby Parker and Samsung last May. Elsewhere, Snap has confirmed the release of its AR smart glasses, Specs, in 2026, and Apple is reportedly plotting the launch of AI-powered smart glasses by the end of the year. Expect all these tech companies to lean into fashion’s suite of photographers, marketers and creatives to craft a brand image that makes these products appear ‘fashion’ enough for consumers to want to wear them.
Experts predict these releases will house more advanced tech that can better understand the wearer’s environment, paired with lighter and smaller designs. For Kristi Woolsey, BCG’s global immersive technology lead, 2026 promises to be a “pivotal year” for smart glasses in particular, while health tracking devices like the Oura ring or the Whoop wristband will target new customers with improved AI features, too.
“Devices will benefit from stronger on-device computing, which supports longer battery life, greater privacy and more immersive displays in lighter, smaller hardware,” Woolsey says. “Advances in AI will make wearables more context-aware through improved image recognition, better voice interaction, and more accurate real-time retrieval and prediction.”
Woolsey says the main players in the wearables race have been working on improving sensors, energy-harvesting and intra-device connectivity, so that health tracking wearables like rings and watches will also be able to interact with other devices better this year.
“Across all categories, people will expect their wearables to communicate with each other and deliver support that feels integrated into daily life,” Woolsey adds.
Fashion brands will become their own AI regulators
President Donald Trump rounded off 2025 by signing an executive order that blocks states from enforcing their own AI rules, as part of his push for the US to become the global AI market dominator. But while Trump’s nationwide approach to AI regulation is hands-off, in Europe, regulators are taking a much more cautious approach to the technology, concentrating on rules that place consumer privacy first. At the end of the year, we got a clear sign that fragmentation will worsen in 2026. Only three months after the UK and the US signed a Technology Prosperity Deal to collaborate on AI and quantum computing, the agreement was put on ice in December, with Washington citing the UK’s lack of progress on lowering trade barriers.
This sends a strong signal that brands should not expect global governments to follow the same AI rules, says Shermin Lakha, founder of Lvlup Legal. “As we head into 2026, fashion brands need to plan for different regulations in different markets, rather than assuming one shared standard,” Lakha says. “Without shared standards, brands that aren’t deliberate about how AI tools are used risk compliance failures and losing control of their intellectual property.”
In 2026, she recommends that brands create their own crystal-clear rules on AI use, so that creative teams know exactly which tools they’re allowed to use and what they can and cannot upload — for example, protecting unreleased designs, mood boards, or licensed references. More sensitive creative work should stay in closed or internal AI systems, while third-party tools should be used only for lower-risk tasks, in case questions or disputes arise further down the line.
Lastly, Lakha recommends fashion brands double down on their own protections by insisting on clear contractual provisions with the makers of the AI tools they use, allocating ownership of their brand inputs and AI-generated outputs.
“Fashion brands must become their own regulators through contracts,” Lakha says. “That means treating AI as a cross-border risk asset, investing in legal and contractual infrastructure, and aligning creative innovation with governance discipline. The brands that succeed will not be those that avoided AI, but those that adopted it with discipline, clarity and control.”
‘Cute tech’ will emerge as a counter-trend
In a world where brands and consumers are grappling with what their AI-enhanced futures will look like — and how much the tech could replace elements of their everyday lives and jobs — experts predict that we’ll lean into the “cult of cute tech” as a counter-trend.
In its 2026 trend report, forecaster WGSN notes that the ‘kawaii’ trend of accessorizing with retro tech like Tamagotchis and flip phones as a playful statement, which has long been pervasive in the Asia-Pacific region, will spread to the West this year.
In 2025, we increasingly saw brands experiment with consumer tech hardware as statement accessories. Coperni played on Y2K electro-kitsch and released a special Tamagotchi in March, fused with the design of its signature Swipe bag, which models wore hooked to bags at its Fall/Winter 2025 show.
Elsewhere, Chopova Lowena released its Alto bag, a collaboration with audio brand Sony that was designed to feature its WH-1000XM6 headphones woven into the bag’s exterior. Tech brand Nothing’s headphones were also donned by models at Jane Wade’s show in New York and Marie Lueder’s in London. Meanwhile, its Nothing Phone 3, designed with retro tech elements, is becoming more of a statement accessory among creatives and Gen Z, as the brand sets its sights on more fashion collaborations in the year ahead. In Milan, headphones were spotted on models at Lorenzo Seghezzi, while at Institution by Galib Gassanoff, one look consisted of a white vest adorned with tiny Insta360 action cameras.
Trend experts say we should expect consumer tech as a statement accessory to catch on even more in 2026, as brands lean into the idea that tech hardware can be objects that spark joy, in contrast to the backdrop of existential uncertainty brought about by invisible technology like AI.
“The power of cute has infiltrated a new wave of consumer tech products and experiences that imbue warmth, comfort and emotional connections,” says Lisa Yong, WSGN’s consumer technology content director. “Cute tech will evolve beyond aesthetics or functionality into powerful engagement strategies for tech experiences that prioritize emotional wellness, spark joy and imagination, and ultimately foster happiness in the business of cultivating it.”
