“Tear off those thick layers of suffocating clothing! And remove the fat around your belly!”

The advice comes from Doubao, an AI assistant created by tech giant ByteDance — exactly the kind of fashion guidance that has recently turned the chatbot into a meme across social media. 

In viral videos on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok that ByteDance also owns, users turn on Doubao’s video call feature to ask the AI for outfit advice in real time — then film themselves following its increasingly bizarre instructions. Related hashtags have drawn more than 40 million views on the platform.

In one clip that has garnered more than 1.4 million likes, a student asks Doubao for help picking out an outfit for an outdoor school event where it will be “very cold.”

The AI fixates on the temperature, telling her to wear seven layers: two T-shirts over pajamas, followed by a plaid shirt, a sweatshirt, and two jackets, praising the look as “full of youthful energy.”

But when she struggles to pull on her pants over the layers, the AI suddenly changes course, telling her to remove the clothes so she can move more easily. 

Some creators now deliberately follow Doubao’s advice just to see how outrageous the final outfit will look, turning experiments into viral traffic. Viewers find it humorous to see the AI double down on its nonsensical clothing choices.

In another widely shared clip, a creator asks Doubao for an outfit to wear to a concert. Following the AI’s advice, she rolls up her long pants until they resemble shorts. Viewers joked that the outfit looked less suitable for a concert and more like something worn while working in flooded rice paddies.

The AI also delivers dramatic pep talks alongside its fashion advice. “Step outside with confidence!” it tells users. In some clips, the AI even uses slang, declaring that if the outfit looks bad then it “isn’t human” — a line viewers find funny because it isn’t.

Doubao, first released in August 2023 as a productivity tool and conversational companion, has grown into China’s most popular AI app, with nearly 227 million active users as of December. Its video call feature, launched last May, has also been used to monitor children and pets, offer cooking tips, and help users pick out fruit.

But as the fashion clips spread online, some users wondered what AI actually understands about aesthetics. 

An industry expert who spoke anonymously to domestic media said large AI models are rarely trained specifically on fashion. Instead, their sense of style comes from broad training data, meaning that what the AI sees as “fashionable” may reflect a mix of different opinions, situations and contexts.

“Fashion is difficult for large AI models because it’s subjective — there’s no clear right or wrong,” the expert said.

Editor: Marianne Gunnarsson.

(Header image: Screenshots of users filming themselves following Doubao’s fashion advice. From Douyin)