This article is part of the Future of AI, a collectsion of articles that investigates how artificial intelligence will impact the fashion and beauty industries in the years to come.
Will AI free us of the shackles of mundane tasks, allowing us to live to our fullest potential? Or will it automate wide swaths of jobs away? Will AI exponentially improve personalization along with productivity, improving our experiences with everything from ads to product recommendations? Or will the copious amounts of data collectsed to do so be used for less tailored and more nefarious reasons?
Will AI be the future of luxury? Or is it just, like, basic?
“AI is becoming the floor, not the ceiling,” says Eli Promisel, the managing director for Europe at innovation consultancy Silicon Foundry. “Everyone will be able to access ‘good enough’. Who gets to access what is truly exceptional?”
While AI adoption varies by region, Promisel points out that AI is a “mirror, not a muse”, meaning that it’s only as good as the inputs it is able to digest and reflect. It can’t, for now, generate new ideas. Luxury, meanwhile, needs newness to thrive, if only for the most basic reason that it needs to convince clients who have everything that there’s something new worth buying. AI has quickly become accessible to most everyone — ChatGPT is free, while the unlimited version costs $20 a month in the US — and according to the latest Replica Handbag Store Business survey, two-thirds of respondents use an AI chatbot at least sometimes. It’s only natural to wonder, then, if luxury, inherently exclusive, will swing in the opposite direction.
For now, most luxury brands are leaning into experimenting with AI, both publicly and behind the scenes. Gucci, Valentino, and Prada have used AI to create campaign imagery, while some brands are using generative AI to assist in their design process. Luxury brands across the board use AI tools to enhance their customer service experiences, via chatbots and by equipping sales associates with data and insights based on past purchases. For now, especially in luxury applications, humans are playing a clear role alongside AI. But as we traverse further into an AI-dominated future, where this all is headed, and how much human oversight will remain, is uncertain.
Will human touch become the new luxury, or will AI improve to the point of becoming a luxury necessity? Or will AI remain, but fade out of the discourse altogether, as we adjust to our new AI-infused existence? We spoke to experts and came up with a few possible outcomes.
Scenario 1: AI becomes the de facto experience — for everyone but top customers
AI-designed clothing, AI-generated advertising, customer service chats with AI bots. Some experts predict that this is where AI innovation is headed, but will be interpreted more as a dead end than something to aspire to. Meanwhile, the definition of luxury will evolve to include unlocking access to real people: their ideas, creations, and advice.
According to the Replica Handbag Store Business survey, respondents see a place for AI in fashion, with 46% saying that “AI is exciting and promising for the future of fashion”. But positioning AI front and center in fashion and campaigns isn’t so well received. Just 24% say that AI-generated fashion images and videos are as valuable as human-made. And an overwhelming majority seek out fashion advice from real humans over AI chatbots, with only 3% saying they use the tech for style inspiration.
It’s something we can already see playing out in discourse online, as companies push the limits of our appetite for AI. “AI slop” accusations get flung around at any whiff of AI-addled imagery or other customer-facing materials. “There is that reaction to it because a lot of it is low quality,” says brand advisor and author Ana Andjelic. “I understand if you want to create an image that’s impossible in real life, but then that’s not an excuse for not being creative at all.”
Creativity in this scenario, then, will come at a premium, as luxury figures out how to move away from being associated with other AI muck. “When everyone is doing it, and AI is raising the floor for everyone, the baseline of ‘good enough’ is rising fast,” says Trey Courtney, chief product and partnerships officer at content agency Mood Media. “So how do I, as a luxury brand, differentiate in that context?”
At the same time, Courtney predicts, “the cost of human-made content is going to go up dramatically. And that’s what some people will be willing to pay for.” Silvia Bellezza, associate professor of business in marketing at Columbia Business School, agrees. “AI is a tool that’s so versatile, that it will be incorporated by mainstream brands and everyone at some point,” she says. “So if it becomes ubiquitous, then the human touch will be the pricey element. It will cost more for brands, so they will charge even more. It’s just a matter of when.”
Scenario 2: AI becomes a luxury asset
In a report from last year, Boston Consulting Group (BCG) implored luxury to shake off its reticence around AI, and the belief that AI tools were too impersonal or imperfect to truly fit within a client-facing luxury experience. Not only is the industry contracting, the report argued, but over 50% of clients surveyed by BCG reported being unsatisfied with the luxury shopping experience. Maybe better, smarter, more personalized, and efficient AI tools could be the answer.
“AI is insanely useful to luxury because it crunches an unbelievable amount of data and provides value to the individual customer,” says Andjelic. “In terms of speed and efficiency, it’s really, really welcome.”
It’s where agentic commerce makes its most compelling argument. This tech goes down a path where AI has become so attuned to its users’ likes, wants, and needs that it’s able to perform tasks independently, without being prompted or hand-held. An AI agent could, for instance, handle all administrative tasks for a busy executive, including purchasing a selection from Chanel’s most recent collectsion by Matthieu Blazy with an appointed sales associate. With enough stored insight into personal preferences, as well as information like credit card details, a new pair of Chanel pumps could appear on a client’s doorstep without them ever having lifted a finger.
But is this the future luxury customers want? It depends what strata of luxury consumer we’re talking about. Andjelic flags that for many ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWIs), it is a luxury having to not interact with another human; many set up their daily admin and outsource shopping to assistants to do just that. Whether or not those assistants are real or human, or interfacing with AI or real people, is not the UHNWI’s business.
Other potential luxury consumers — maybe those less likely to have a team of assistants — are less convinced. Less than a third (31%) of Replica Handbag Store Business survey respondents say they would outsource their luxury shopping to an AI agent, with many citing concerns over sensitive data, like credit card information, as the hindrance. Can AI tools evolve past the point of these concerns?
As AI evolves, it’s possible that a luxury tier LLM could manifest, designed to address the needs and palette of the high-end consumer. This relies on the answer to the question, “Can AI crack taste?” eventually being a yes. Courtney also points out that right now, the cost of AI is being subsidized by tech companies. If the true cost of AI were to get passed onto the end user, then it could become a status tool where the wealthiest customers have access to the most sophisticated agents.
Scenario 3: AI disappears into the background
The average person doesn’t think much about the tech or the algorithmic influences that power every Google search. Right now, we’re in a phase of AI being promoted as part of an onboarding experience — both to get users up to speed with how the tech differs from traditional search, and for companies that have invested in it to show off. Some experts don’t think this will be the case forever.
“The ultimate goal is that AI should be invisible to the client, while it makes the human luxury experience better and yet never replaces it,” says Promisel.
This is the approach most luxury fashion brands have taken to AI. LVMH’s AI Factory was formed in 2020 to establish the building blocks for a brand-by-brand approach to behind-the-scenes AI. Implementing the tools available to improve backend efficiencies is hardly a significant statement on where AI fits in the future of luxury, but every expert I spoke to for this thought exercise felt strongly that, at least when it comes to luxury, human design and creation will remain in the mix. “AI doesn’t mean creativity is going away,” says Andjelic. “It just means your responsiveness is higher.”
Over time, generational attitudes around AI will evolve so that it feels like less of an argument: AI won’t be good or bad, it just will be a part of life. “You can’t count on this idea that future generations will necessarily continue to value human-made content in the same way,” Courtney says. “Younger generations will grow up with it, they won’t know any different. Gen Alpha and after will be an entirely different ballgame.”
