Watched a movie recently, MoneyBall wherein a baseball manager starts picking his team basis results of a computer algorithm created by a geek. And then the team wins successive matches and sets a record for successive wins in the history. And its a true story.
I wondered how come computer algorithms can predict success so much that coaches/selectors who have played the game for years start becoming irrelevant. People who have been there and have gathered that knack of identifying the hidden potential, can be replaced for the better, efficient and faster Artificial Intelligence driven programs.
However, this is getting real and real today. In my industry of fashion too. Yes, an industry which runs on WGSN trends and worldwide fashion walks trends with hordes of designers and fashion pundits and critics giving thier magical crystal ball predictions of future trends and fads. And all the fashion magazine editors, and retailer feedbacks and planners' output will get replaced with what a piece of code can do. And its here. Now. I digged a little on this and found its happening in India as well.
Closer to home in India, ecommerce companies are having a huge gold mine of data of consumer purchase as well as browsing before purchase. Myntra for example has launched multiple brands like Moda Rapido and Here&Now where the design are predicted basis software's suggestions after mining thier database (together as Myntra, Jabong & Flipkart, they claim 70% online fashion market share) as well as crwaling some thousands of fashion blogs and feeds of social media platforms like instagram. Called as Rapid, this technology would come up with a list of attributes: types of collars, sleeves, cuts, colours and other features currently popular with customers and suggest designs to make.
And they claim huge improvements in sell thru(s), so much so that bulk of thier private labels will start working on AI based trends now.
And then there are global players like Amazon using AI-fashion integration by developing an AI fashion designer. The algorithm learns about a particular style of fashion from images, and can then generate new items in similar styles from scratch.
As per online news articles, i found that an Indian designer brand is using IBM’s cognitive tool Watson to map the future of Bollywood fashion by combining analysis of over 600,000 images of fashion runway shows and Indian couture.
In US, a fashion brand called StitchFix, is solely created out of AI predicted designs for different kinds of customer. The styling service has algorithms to predict what styles people of which profile prefer.
Wow! And imagine the impact in terms of how AI can help brands and retailers with predictive forecasting, capacity planning and merchandising. Issues of unsold inventories, deep discounting, 4-6 months of design to inventory cycle, all getting solved by AI.
How paradoxical it is now. Something as creative as fashion is now predicted by a machine! Is it like a victory of geeks over the fashion pundits? Time will tell.
I am an engineer by the way!
Sources - https://www.livemint.com/AI/tdxtlGYRklB16h8rWj7A2H/How-Artificial-Intelligence-is-empowering-designers-in-India.html
https://www.livemint.com/Companies/tchtq74FOkMM43szMIHh0M/At-Myntra-machines-tell-designers-how-to-make-clothes.html
https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/how-algorithms-are-threatening-fashions-white-collar-jobs
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