TECHNOLOGY

How Fashion Retailers Can Benefit from AI in 2022

Published

2 years ago

February 15, 2022

How Fashion Retailers Can Benefit from AI in 2022

Artificial intelligence (AI) has already begun to revolutionize the fashion industry.

Read this article to find out what fashion professionals can expect from AI in 2022.

Zara, H&M, Dior, Macy’s, and Nike are just a few examples of well-known fashion brands that use AI in their business models. This technology enables companies to attract more customers, cut down expenses, get additional competitive edges, and boost revenues. In this article, you’ll find examples of exactly how fashion brands can benefit from AI. All these cases will be industry-specific and not generic, such as employing chatbots or opening cashless stores.

AI-Generated Product Photos

Will Artificial Superintelligence Create Infinite Economic Growth or More Inequality

Fashion is one of the most wasteful industries on a global scale. Every year, it generates roughly 92 million tons of textile waste. More and more businesses are opening their own second-hand marketplaces. Consumers are increasingly turning to companies that produce sustainable clothing collections. Nevertheless, unsold items remain a major issue—and AI might help businesses solve it.

Previously, fashion brands were too prone to overstocking. They lacked tools that enabled them to accurately predict which items will enjoy the highest demand. Companies had to rely on the opinions of their human employees. Now, they can rely on historical product data to carry out predictive analytics and trend forecasting. AI can analyze the color, print, and cut of trending products as well as consumers’ response to them on social media. Besides, AI inventory optimization enables fashion retailers to determine the optimal geographical allocation and market drop calendar for their new product catalogs.

Forward-thinking companies can create realistic images of virtual garments and accessories based on consumer demands and fashion trends. They can share these pictures on social media or e-commerce platforms to check how people react to them. Brands will submit clothing designs to manufacturers—only if consumers approve of the virtual model. AI enables companies to precisely measure the demand and prevent the problem of unsold inventory.

Virtual Photoshoots

Model shots can boost garment, shoes, and accessories sales by up to 60%. But when the pandemic broke out, brands were typically unable to bring models in for photoshoots safely. Ecommerce platforms were afraid that would affect their sales. But some of them came up with a creative way out: they mapped virtual copies of their products on the bodies of their models, providing consumers with realistic garment images. Obtaining photos of these models remotely enabled brands to boost their sales.

Developers have already released algorithms that can modify the poses of models and the clothes they’re wearing without losing important details. Moreover, brands can generate tailor-made models for themselves. These models look incredibly realistic. When consumers see a photo or video of this boy or girl, they can never guess it’s just an AI-generated image. So far, digital models can’t move as freely as their human counterparts. They can only copy the poses of real people. But in the next few years, the industry should be able to overcome this challenge.

It’s hard to say whether digital models will become commonplace. Right now, brands might want to use them because it’s a fresh concept that can easily attract consumers’ attention. Plus, this technology enables companies to emphasize how eco-conscious they are. Most samples that human models shoot end up in landfills, while digital technologies can help cut down on the environmental waste. Besides, digital models can enable businesses to reduce their expenses.

Stores can use the same body mapping technology in their virtual fitting rooms. Consumers can upload their photos and try on fashion items digitally before the purchase. They should allow retailers to maximize their sales and revenues. Customers should be happy because AI can recommend the products that will suit them best. Clients will only try on those things that make them look stunning and will gladly return to this store over-and-over again.

Fashion NFTs Designed by AI

The NFT acronym stands for non-fungible tokens. These digital assets are stored on a blockchain and can be anything: pictures, videos, songs, texts, or garments. Each NFT is unique. You can’t swap your token for any other one even if it has the same value. This technology caused a sensation in 2021.

Fashion brands already release NFTs in parallel to their physical collections. Such products exist only in virtual reality and customers might be ready to pay huge sums for them—up to several million dollars. After you purchase an NFT, you can wear it on your digital avatar.

AI is just as good at creating NFTs as human professionals—or perhaps even better. It draws inspiration from already existing sneakers, analyzes their parameters, and comes up with innovative models that are released in a single copy. In theory, AI should be able to deliver hyper-customized items much quicker than the most skilled designer.

Blockchain Combats Counterfeit Products

Will Blockchain Make Driving Licenses Obsolete

Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology that can be used for various purposes, such as backing up cryptocurrencies or storing records about any type of transaction (marriages, deaths, buying properties, and so on). Fashion retailers can attach a label to each of their products to define its origin and ownership. Thanks to the nature of blockchain, it will be impossible to modify the information on those labels. Any member of the supply chain will be able to check at any moment where the item was produced, who owned it, and when it changed hands. You can find out all the relevant details—from raw material acquisition and factory information—down to how the finished products were packaged and delivered.

Similarly, brands can use near-field communication (NFC) chips to tag their items. By scanning the information from the tag, consumers can get to know everything about the product they want to buy.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully, this article came in handy and now you understand the benefits of using artificial intelligence in fashion retail better. AI can organize virtual photoshoots and commission digital product photos. AI can design NFTs and blockchain can combat counterfeit products. The sooner a company jumps on board these amazing technological opportunities, the greater competitive edge it will obtain.

Up Next

How Organizations Are Leveraging Augmented Reality in Recruitment Post Covid-19

Don't Miss

The Future of International Commerce

Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

5 months ago

December 1, 2023

Max

AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

5 months ago

November 29, 2023

Max

Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

5 months ago

November 28, 2023

Max

Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud