The world has grown accustomed to new technologies.
They pop in like the friend of a friend who shows up at a dinner party only to talk too loud, drink too much and stay too long.
And even when they have something real to offer, the Sturm und Drang of their first impression usually leaves the fashion industry at least somewhat exhausted and overflowing with the remnants of the next big thing that fell short.
The metaverse is a good example — maybe everyone eventually starts living online and Roblox’s digital world is still thriving, but the buzz has definitely moved on. Witness Nike’s once-hip digital sneaker unit Rtfkt, which said it is winding down and becoming “an artifact of cultural revolution.”
Artificial intelligence, by nearly all accounts, is something different — too broad based, too powerful and too able to cut costs and personalize for consumers to recede into the background quickly.
McKinsey estimated that generative AI alone will add $150 billion to $275 billion to fashion’s operating profits by 2030.
AI is not just a technology, but an accelerant that can help both people and other technologies accomplish more, connecting dots and unlocking new possibilities.
The full promise — and danger — of AI still seems to rest largely in the future, but 2024 amounted to a kind of coming out party for the technology.
From powering real-time inventory management in supply chains to helping shoppers pick the right look via chatbot and determining the best fit online through virtual try-on, AI was everywhere this year.
And retail and fashion are racing to put the technology to work even more, cognizant that even as the industry moves ahead, there is no promised land but just an ever-shifting future.
Doug McMillon, chief executive officer of retail giant Walmart Inc., told investors last month: “I’m a little hesitant to talk about AI, because I know someone will hear this in the months and years to come and chuckle about how old school it sounds, given how fast things are changing. But it’s important to convey that we’re learning and applying generative AI, AI and machine learning to solve the practical opportunities right in front of us.”
While ChatGPT made AI famous when it launched in late 2022, it was only this year that fashion and retail companies had a chance to really start implementing the technology across their operations.
AI is available to everyone at some level — and people and companies everywhere are putting it through its paces. But much of the real action is happening at the biggest companies, which can spend big on the technology. In retail, that’s Amazon and Walmart and, in tech, Google-parent Alphabet, Facebook-parent Meta and so on.
Other brands and retailers are having to be choosier and are focusing their AI energies, making this year’s holiday season something of a stress test for how the technology can be put to work.
“Very, very few companies are nailing it,” said Rebecca Homkes, a consultant and high-growth strategy specialist, in an interview last month. “There’s no such thing as an AI strategy. This is what’s holding a bunch of companies back. They’re trying to develop the perfect AI strategy and there’s no such thing. The role of AI is to enable support and accelerate your value-creating strategy. So if you are confused on value creation….AI cannot help you this holiday season.”
Just how AI can help supercharge a business is an open and active question with brands using the technology this year to look for value everywhere. Among them:
- The Estée Lauder Cos. partnered with OpenAI to put its technology to work across the business. The beauty company saw quick results making sense of its massive trove of data, which was kept in different formats and hard to coordinate. “Before, we spent hours manually cleaning and organizing data to uncover insights,” said Yuan Zhan, director of ELC’s Fragrance Foresight team. “With the Fragrance GPT, we can ask complex questions in plain English, and it combs through the data instantly.”
- Barcelona-based Mango raised eyebrows in July with an advertising campaign that was generated entirely with AI tools, backed by real-life humans in the company’s design, art and styling and photography departments. “Artificial intelligence is a technological revolution that presents great opportunities that should act as a copilot to extend the capabilities of our employees and further amplify our creativity,” said Jordi Alex, chief information technology officer. “Because technology will either make us more human or it won’t.”
- And some are going more or less all the way with AI. The Resonance One platform, which was cofounded by Lawrence Lenihan and Christian Gheorghe, can create and customize looks, send the design into manufacturing and produce a finished product. Brands can now use the AI-powered platform themselves with a subscription. “The tutorial now allows them to ask the One AI to walk them through the various things that they can do in the platform,” Gheorghe said. “It exposes things, like ‘create your first style’ or the new products, integrate your Shopify store. You can also use the interactive aspect to ask questions and be guided on what you can do next.”
Maybe that’s it. AI this year has given fashion the sense that anything just might be next.
And after that will come the impact, whether that’s lower costs, faster design processes and production, jobs that are no longer needed, human expertise that is augmented by technology or something else.
