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Business News: The AI rush is on. Enjoying attention over the past eighteen months with the public thanks to its access through Chat GPT, generative artificial intelligence is likely to transform the most significant part of business sectors as its solutions proliferate. Luxury goods are no exception to the rule, as confirmed today by a study conducted by the Comité Colbert and Bain & Co.
Third report on luxury and technology commissioned by the French organization for approximately 80 luxury goods companies and the consultancy firm, this study is based on a questionnaire sent to member companies of the Comité Colbert and interviews with various decision-makers and technical profiles within the companies.
At a time when AI is emerging as a strategic tool and is being looked at by every management committee on the planet, the study “Artificial intelligence: the discreet revolution”, is unveiled.
“With this study, we wanted to give vision and perspective. In addition to possible uses, our idea was to quantify the degree of adoption of solutions and those tested by companies. This will also enable us to measure their development over time,” explains Mathilde Haemmerlé, partner in charge of the Luxury Goods division at Bain & Company in Paris. “We have covered analytical artificial intelligence, which has already been deployed for several years by groups, particularly for forecasting stocks or allocating them, and which requires considerable resources and specialized skills to create models, and generative AI, which has emerged more recently and is based on processing structured and unstructured data and is more accessible. What we see is that in the next 3-4 years the two will converge. It’s a revolution, because its fields of application concern the entire business value chain. Generative AI represents a huge wave. However, the culture of luxury, with its notions of intimacy, human relationships, authenticity and expertise, means that luxury has to find its own model. It won’t be possible to apply market solutions. AI will intrude with a significant touch of discretion and, this is what we are hearing from the houses, must never replace the human but be present to augment, participate in and enrich.” The wave has yet to overwhelm the sector, however. According to the study, which identified 20 AI use cases, on average homes have deployed 1.6. These are mostly operational efficiency topics, such as sales forecasting tools. But in addition to these established developments, the companies are currently testing an average of 5.6 AI applications.
