Future Of Getting Dressed: A Look At How India's Fashion Retailers Are Leveraging AI As Personal Stylists

[caption id="attachment_20357" align="alignnone" width="7952"]

Mannequin in a suit in a studio[/caption] With artificial intelligence donning the various roles that it has, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it excelling as fashion stylists, suggesting the fashionistas what to wear and critiquing their fashion style. For the fashion forward people, there are startups and fashion retailers developing sophisticated technologies to offer a personalised customer experience. From developing algorithms focused on computer vision to creating virtual stylists, retailers are adopting artificial intelligence to offer the best to its customers. Whether text or voice enabled assistants to humans or bots—conversational strategy powered by AI is slowly progressing to be the future of fashion. By directing the machines to process, understand and use visual data just as humans do, AI can very well take the position of being personal stylists. From Myntra to Flipkart and international brands like Levi’s and GAP, they are vouching by the promise of artificial intelligence to style people. And with thousands of brands overwhelming the customers, it only becomes easier to have an assistance that uses data and AI to look for what you want to how, how will it fit you and what’s suits you the best using data and AI.

Ecommerce and retail giants taking a leap:

There are many reports that suggest that by the year 2020, over 80 percent of retailers would be using chatbots in some or the other capacity. With the level of personalised interaction and assistance that they offer, it can bring in more customers, thereby helping in scalability as well as ensuring a good customer experience. With many international startups like Mode.ai and Eptytom making a wave in AI fashion, there are many home bred startups that are styling customers in a fashionable way.

Myntra:

One of the biggest online fashion retailers in India, Myntra is winning the race when it comes to the adoption of technologies like artificial intelligence and augmented reality to help its customers grab the latest fashion trends. Its fast fashion brands—Moda Rapido and Here&Now are excelling the AI race as it can offer computer generated clothes such as jeans, T-shirts, shoes etc. without the need for designers to intervene. Moda Rapido is a product of Myntra’s Rapid Project that uses artificial intelligence to not only design the clothes but reduce the time required to bring out the latest fashion in the market. The process where computer is fed with data from sources such as fashion portals, social media and others to understand what a customer needs, the time has been reported to drastically reduce from 180 days to 45 days. Computer vision and artificial intelligence are the key players here which creates thousands of permutation and combinations to decide what could best suit the customer and have the chances of selling the best. The tryst of Myntra with AI for fashion dates back to 2016 when it used AI and ML to deliver personalized customer experiences by using customer data to curate lines based on current fashion trends and make a one-of-a kind personalized store experience. That’s not all; Myntra is also working in the area of augmented reality to help its customer stay up to date with the latest fashion trends. Once in a fully functional phase, the feature will be able to use camera on customer’s phone to critique their fashion choices. It would analyse what a customer is wearing and then provide rating to the fashion-savvy crowd who wants to look fashionable.

Flipkart:

The ecommerce giant was reported to have developed Project MIRA, an AI-based shopping assistant, that was developed with an intention of making online shopping experience as personal as possible. It was reported to have been collaborating with Microsoft to build its capabilities to apply AI and machine learning based solutions for easier sales process.

Others making a headway:

An app launched GAP called the DressingRoom allows the consumer to try on the clothes virtually, based on measurements such as height and weight. The app creates a 3D mannequin that provides a 360 degree view of the model on the chosen measurements. Alibaba too launched FashionAI that is offering recognisable interface to customers to try clothes. The solution which works for offline stores makes suggestions for clothing and accessory based on items that you are carrying. These recommendations are suggested not with a camera but information embedded in each item’s tag, collected by a sensor. Working for offline stores back in India is Talespin that is using artificial intelligence to offer shoppers with personalised recommendations.

Indian startups that are transforming AI to fashion stylists:

MAD street Den:

This startup based out of India and California has developed AI fashion brand called Vue.ai that is an end-to-end AI assisted solution that tries to analyse what people are browsing and looking up on their app and recommend them what might suit them the best. It looks on parameters like colour pattern necklines, sleeve length, styles etc. to be a stylist that people are looking for. Claiming to serve clients like Levi’s, Vue.ai is the world's only end-to-end artificial intelligence stack for brands and retailers.

Stylumia:

An AI and computer vision startup, Stylumia has built artificial intelligence engine that crawls the web for fashion related information including shopping sites to analyse consumer behaviour and suggest customised results to brands and retailers. It breaks the complexities of the fashion business down to product, brand, consumer and channels to deliver higher precision in predictions over time.

Fabulyst:

Based out of Hyderabad, its AI-based platform assists women shoppers at fashion commerce stores. It helps customers discover and shortlist products, while recommending the best fit and styling based on queries around body measurements, body variation and skin tone. The company claims to have developed its proprietary algorithms based on deep learning technology, which are patent-pending.

Kakcho:

Claiming to be a fashion friend, this Delhi based startup focuses on using AI for rediscovering the way people decide what to wear and buy by connecting them to fashion stylists and industry experts.