Could AI Help You Find The Perfect Travel Wardrobe?

How many times have you used the search tool on your favourite brand’s website only to be given a list of products that in no way answer your question? 

A new AI service could help you to find not just a new dress, but your favourite new dress by crunching vast data sets to bring shoppers exactly what they want. When it comes to travel, you’ll be able to tailor shopping searches depending on the destination, whether Paris or Accra. Depict AI’s new ChatGPT service is already being adapted by Joseph, Myrqvist, Ilse Jakobsen and Berlin-based retailer Broke and Schön.

“It should operate in the same way that you would be helped by a really good in-store sales associate,” says Depict AI interim CEO Axel Larsson. “We wanted to bring that experience to an e-commerce setting. You might just need a quick answer, for example, ‘I need to find jeans, show me what you have.’ Or, you might be looking for something more specific, such as, ‘I’m going on holiday to Marrakech, and I need some wide-leg trousers in a size 12.’ In simple terms, this is just about helping people to find the products that they love in an easier way. This tool really replicates that great in-store service.”

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Stockholm-based Depict AI was founded in 2019 initially as a way of helping brands to merchandise their online offerings more efficiently. It aims to bridge the gap between bricks-and-mortar stores and their digital counterparts by amplifying their brand story across both platforms. The ChatGPT function works like an online chat, as if you’re talking to someone working for the brand. The company has even found a way of replicating the respective business’ tone of voice. “It’s very similar to using a personal shopper who has a real understanding of that particular fashion label,” explains Larsson. “The difference is the scale of the products you might be recommended. The suggestions will be based on what’s available on the entire online store, rather than just what’s available in the physical store you’re in.”

The tool was created after the Depict AI team noticed that there is often a gap between what shoppers search for online and what they are actually recommended. More detail was needed, and so they found a way of running brand data to create more accurate results – the service enables customers to search based on a destination or an occasion, as well as searching by colour, style and size. It can also create entire looks rather than a more random product selection. “You can be as specific as you want,” says Larsson. “You can say, ‘I want to look like Victoria Beckham in her 30s and it has to be suitable for a country getaway’ and it will show you products that aligned with that.”

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The impact of AI (artificial intelligence) is a subject that still sparks widespread concern across the creative industries, as those inside it fear for jobs and the end of true creativity. Like it or not, AI has already arrived at fashion’s door. Brands including H&M and Guess are already using AI models, and many other industry juggernauts including Zara are using it to control supply chains and to predict trends. Larsson believes that it can be used as a way of enriching fashion and improving existing issues, including the doom-scrolling shopping model of the big multi-brand retailers such as Net-A-Porter and Farfetch. Whether or not a ChatGPT service like Depict’s could boost the fortunes of the ailing multi-brands remains to be seen. “The brands that are using the tool have all seen a 10-30% increase in conversion rates – more shoppers are clicking to buy because they are finding it easier to find what they want,” he says. “You’re being given a guided experience.”

There is also an environmental benefit to using Depict’s ChatGPT service in that it reduces the amount of items that are sent back to the retailer. In 2023, the Guardian reported that UK shoppers posted back more than £4.1billion of online clothing purchases last year. According to analysts at GlobalData, that figure will rise by 16.7% before 2027, and a high number of these end up in landfill. “If you’re finding the exact product you want, you’re less likely to send it back,” says Larsson. “Fashion has a huge issue with waste and overproduction, and what many brands are struggling with – and why some of them go bankrupt – is because of sell-through rates. AI has so much data to help retailers make more informed decisions from season to season. It won’t replace creativity, it’ll fuel it.”

Larsson believes we should view AI with optimism. It might do some of the work as a personal shopper, but it works off data – not taste or a discerning eye. “I don’t see this as competition to bricks-and-mortar stores. We want to improve the customer experience online – the customer deserves that – but sometimes you still want to go into store, touch the fabric and see how it moves. We’re not replacing that,” he says firmly. “We just want to fill the gap between what people actually want and mean when they search for something, and to help them do so faster and easier online. It’s smarter fashion rather than fast fashion.”