The abbreviation AI stands for ‘Artificial Intelligence’, which involves machine learning and the automation of intelligent behavior. That makes AI perhaps one of the most important topics of the hour.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly evolving technology defined as the ability of computers or machines to accomplish jobs that are traditionally performed by humans. There is not a single industry that can go past AI technologies, and the fashion industry is no exception there. Some of the key advantages of AI in the fashion industry includes increase in user experience, increased production efficiency, automation along sales, productions, logistics and intelligent forecasting. Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being used by manufacturers to improve the retail experience of online customers. Rather than browsing through apps or websites, potential consumers interact with their digital assistants. The AI asks the buyer a number of questions and then send them a list of items or goods that are appropriate for them. Classic examples of such AI are Google Home, Amazon Alexa, etc. As a result to this, shopping becomes more intuitive and personalized in the aforementioned procedure.
AI does not only take part in the care of consumers, but nurses the needs of the manufacturers as well. Fashion industry sales growth, according to Business of Fashion 2019, has rocketed and has become one of the major economic giants with Asia Pacific accounting for 38%, Europe for 26%, and North America for 22% of sales growth. However, in contrast to that, due to difficulties such as overproduction and product returns, supposedly because of the consumers’ dissatisfaction in terms of size, color, style, concept and trends, fashion industries are more prone to generating and polluting the world with a large scale product wastage. As a response, industries must become more customer centric in order to properly enforce eco – friendly manufacturing methods. Taking advantage of new AI technologies for supply chain development is one good approach to attain this digitally. Technologies for AI are also improving conventional online shopping by attaining various advancements as time passes by. Some of the advanced technologies let us imitate any well known personality, help us to virtually try on clothes, shoes, accessories, etc which are displayed on the specific application being used. This helps the customers strike quickly and directly for any sort of purchase they wish to make.
AI also provides the opportunity for fashion manufacturers to maintain accuracy to match supply and demand. Therefore, technology is said to be the biggest driver of recent ships in the fashion world. According to McKinsey’s thorough overview on the global fashion industry in 2018, the three buzzwords were change, digital, and fast. The desire for fast fashion has grown far more in the age of social media, which appears to reflect altering consumer behavior and the power of social media. A single post by a social media influencer can skyrocket the demand for the particular product being promoted. In addition to it all, Production inefficiencies can be avoided, and forecast errors can be minimized by up to 50%, all thanks to AI technology that determines demand quantities in real time.
While advanced, there is often a considerable amount of unfamiliarity with the application of Artificial Intelligence in fashion, making this retail technology project problematic. Before launching an AI application, it is very necessary to take careful steps in making sure that every aspect of the application is functioning as coded. Image recognition is a vital example as such. Image recognition is a terminology for computer systems that use algorithms and machine learning ideas to recognize individual persons, animals, objects, or any other specified materials. The image recognition application must be made feasible to recognize and distinguish between different images as quickly as possible before it can be operational. Also, another disadvantage of virtual fashion industries is to not being able to touch and feel the desired fabric or material being tried on. Gerard Smit, Benelux Chief Technology Officer & Digital Transformation Leader at IBM, states that the use of sentiment and emotion analysis is not utilized to the maximum in the fashion industry. Smit also mentioned, “Emotion analysis is about how people feel. There are already several chat bots that can analyze a feeling and emotion through the way the consumer communicates”. He knows that to improve the online feeling there is a significant development going on in the AI world. Consumers are expected to ‘feel’ the structure of the material by touching the screen of a smartphone hopefully if the technology advancement that has yet to hit the market works out accordingly. Although, the strategic perspective of AI is crucial as the ultimate purpose is to stimulate business value, and so necessary careful steps must be attained in order for the businesses to flourish on both ends.
Nevertheless, from the way fashion companies produce their items to the way they are being advertised and sold, AI is playing a very fundamental role in profoundly changing the world of fashion.
