I wanted to love Google Photos' AI wardrobe feature — but it's driving me crazy

I don’t know about you, but I’ve long had an album in Google Photos titled “Fit Checks.” Anytime I put together a new outfit, I take a picture and add it here for future reference. So, when I learned that Google Photos was about to add a similar feature using an AI-based digital wardrobe, I was excited.

The idea is simple. Google Photos scans your photos, identifies the clothes you own, and builds a digital closet from your existing photo library. You can then mix and match those clothes to create outfits, with generative AI showing you what the combinations could look like.

Now that the feature is rolling out, I had to try it for myself. Long story short, I’ve since spent a few agonizing days with the virtual wardrobe and have come away both impressed and incredibly annoyed by what Google has built. The AI is surprisingly good at identifying the clothes in your photos. Unfortunately, the actual experience is still so rough that I can barely call it functional. There are some genuinely impressive moments here, but also enough bugs that calling it a work in progress would be being generous.

The persistent Google Workspace issue

It even managed to pull together all my different vetements and let me mix and match them together. But when it came time to actually try on the clothes, the setup simply wouldn’t progress. After a few tries, I suspected this might have something to do with my Google Workspace account, and I was right. Ironically, on my Android phone, the app gave me no indication that the feature wasn’t supported on Workspace accounts. It was only when I switched to my iPhone that I got a pop-up saying it wasn’t supported for my account type.

As it turns out, a significant number of Google services are simply unavailable to users who’ve opted for a custom domain with Google Workspace. While I’ve learned to live with the limitations, it does feel like a very Google problem. Moreover, if the feature isn’t available for Workspace accounts yet, Google should simply hide the option. Instead, the app shows it to you, lets you tap on it, even shows you the outfits, and then does nothing.

So, to actually test out the feature, I switched over to my partner’s regular personal Google account. But, as it turns out, the problems didn’t end there.

Google Photos is surprisingly good at finding your clothes

The setup workflow is fairly simple. You just need to acknowledge the new feature the first time you tap the “Create an outfit” option, or open the album under Collections. Google Photos takes a few hours to scan your photos and, once done, presents a list of all your garments.

This bit is genuinely impressive. Google Photos did a remarkably good job of finding individual clothing items across thousands of photos. Shirts, jackets, pants, skirts, shoes, and other items were automatically pulled out and organized into a digital wardrobe.

The best part is that Google isn’t just throwing everything into broad categories.

My partner has quite a few different types of skirts, for example. Google Photos was able to tell them apart and organize them into more specific categories. It could distinguish between midi and mini skirts with no issue. Similarly, T-shirts and blouses are individually categorized. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into making it useful.

I’ve tried a lot of digital wardrobe apps, and none has given me clear results. Elsewhere, downloading and reuploading images from a retailer is cumbersome. All of which means that I’ve never really stuck to the apps. But this Google Photos integration is something I can see myself using.

The AI try-on feature is where things fall apart

Of course, building a digital closet isn’t the main reason Google created this feature. The real party trick is being able to create outfits and see what they might look like on you. It’s not a novel concept. In fact, the popular fast-fashion retailer Zara recently launched a similar feature within its app, though that is predictably limited to clothes you can shop at Zara.

The idea is that you can select up to six items from your wardrobe and tap the “Try It On” button. Google then uses generative AI to create an image showing you wearing the selected combination. At least, that’s how it is supposed to work. In my testing, the AI generation was incredibly unreliable.

More often than not, tapping the button resulted in nothing. Sometimes I would get an error message. Other times, the app would sit there processing and eventually fail without giving me any useful explanation. I spent far more time tapping the button and waiting for something to happen than I did actually looking at generated outfits.

That’s a shame, because this is the part of the feature that makes the whole concept exciting. The wardrobe itself is nice, but being able to see how different clothes could work together is why you’d want to use this feature.

That said, when it works, the results are rather excellent. Sure, the face veers towards uncanny valley and is not really an accurate representation of the person. But it’s a good enough approximation to determine whether the outfit works. Moreover, the actual clothes are modeled extremely well and are true to life, down to the colors. And that’s the part that matters.

Right now, though, the generative AI component feels like it needs quite a bit more work. Realistically, I could only get it to work once out of dozens of attempts at different combinations of outfits. That’s obviously not good.

Thankfully, the feature isn’t completely useless when the AI generation fails. You can still pick the clothes you want to combine and save them as an outfit, even if Google can’t generate an image of you wearing them. You can also give these outfits names. But none of this is as useful as the virtual try-on. Without the AI-generated preview, the Wardrobe section essentially becomes a digital mood board.

Google Photos Wardrobe has a lot of potential

The idea behind Google Photos’ virtual wardrobe is fantastic. More importantly, when it works, the results are great. I’m sure I’m not the only person who has opened a closet and thought there was nothing to wear, only to find something I completely forgot about buried at the back. Having a visual catalog of your clothes inside an app you already use every day could make it much easier to rediscover those items.

Google is taking something that would normally require hours of manual work and doing it automatically using photos already in your camera roll. Unfortunately, the feature isn’t quite ready for prime time yet. Between my Google Workspace woes and Google Photos‘ repeated refusal to generate images, the integration feels like little more than a beta.

That said, I’m hopeful Google will improve things as the rollout continues, because when everything works, the feature genuinely feels like magic. For now, though, Google Photos’ virtual wardrobe feels more like an impressive experiment than something I’d rely on every morning.