Integrating genAI into every-day life (as a late adopter)

8

October

2024

5/5 (1)

Before starting my master’s in Business Information Management my exposure to Generative AI tools was fairly small. Especially after reading through a couple of the blog posts and talking to my fellow BIM students I realised that I am definitely a late adopter compared to my peers. Prior to my studies, my use of genAI was limited  to simple text generations, like drafting an email with ChatGPT, or the AI Chatbot at my working student job that helped the company’s employees with all sorts of internal and administrative questions. I found genAI in both cases highly useful but failed to apply its potential to more areas of my life. The main point that stopped me back then were all the mistakes genAI tools were still making. I constantly heard stories about ChatGPT making up facts, citing sources that didn’t even exist or not being able to apply basic mathematics. Hearing about these incidents led me to believe that genAI had not reached a reliable stage yet. Consequently, I never made the effort of integrating genAI further into my daily life.

As BIM focuses on emerging technologies, particularly AI applications, I have approached Generative AI tools more open-mindedly. So far, primarily genAI tools related to academia. My most important discovery being Consensus AI. This AI application has become my go-to tool for conducting research. It is not only highly accurate in finding papers related to my research interests, but with the addition of their copilot it is very easy to retrieve relevant information from these papers for my work. Consensus AI also managed to erase my concerns about the accuracy of its information as every hard fact or number is directly linked to a paper, making it easy to validate the AI’s output. An issue that had stopped me before with ChatGPT. Alongside this AI tool, I have also grown to integrate ChatGPT more into my every-day life. It has completely replaced Google’s search engine as my primary search tool and I now ask any question directly to ChatGPT. Even though sometimes validation is required, the validation process is a lot quicker than using Google from the start.

Browsing this blog has further brought my attention to the Mindtrip AI application, an AI tool designed for planning trips. To test its capabilities, I asked it to recommend a trip to Munich, my hometown. I mentioned to the AI that I already know the city quite well and asked about more niche activities and places in the city. Even though I was not a hundred satisfied with the AI’s suggestion of niche activities, I was still surprised by the level of detail in its tips about Munich. It showed that it is definitely sufficient for cities or countries one hasn’t been to before.

My major takeaway after experimenting with a couple of AI tools is that whatever need or problem one encounters on a personal level it is always a valid first step to look for a genAI tool that could address it.

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Does AI have the potential to bury brick-and-mortar fashion stores for good?

20

September

2024

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The importance for fashion retailers to offer an online store in addition to classic brick-and-mortar stores is undeniable. Online shopping comes with benefits for both consumers and retailers. The main benefit for consumers is the convenience that comes with it. It is a lot easier to browse through a retailers offer, it goes by much quicker as there is no need to leave the house and there are no queues when eventually purchasing a product basket. Additionally, it makes price comparisons a lot easier and offers an opportunity to always find the best sales. On the retailer side, there is a huge potential to collect data on their customers and consequently a chance to get to know the customer and his preferences better (Borovkov, 2017). This is further reflected in the numbers. Globally speaking, around 21 percent of fashion sales are done through e-commerce transactions. Looking at Europe this number even jumps to 30 percent, nearly a third of all transactions (Statista, 2023).

However, this also shows that the majority of fashion purchases still happen offline, in the traditional brick-and-mortar stores. But why? If online shopping offers so many benefits. There are essentially two main reasons that keep the consumer demand for brick-and-mortar stores high and persistent. Firstly, consumers get the opportunity to try on and check the fit of clothes before purchase. Secondly, they are able to consult the store employees for fashion advice (Dunagan, 2024).

While AI has been integrated by fashion retailers a while ago in areas like data analytics, do recent AI developments have the potential to bury the existence of brick-and-mortar stores for good (Marr)? In 2023 Zalando, a major fashion e-commerce retailer from Germany, announced the launch of a ‘fashion assistant’ with the help of Generative AI. They partnered with OpenAI, the corporation behind ChatGPT, to offer their customers the opportunity to ask for fashion advice via their e-commerce platform. Consumers now get the chance to tell the platform about events they will be attending, a trend they are trying to jump on or ask for matching shoes to a dress they already own. The fashion assistant is then able to make suggestions for the consumer based on the input (Zalando, 2023). The emergence of such a technology makes the presence of employees in physical stores obsolete. One of the two reasons why consumers still tend to shop their clothes offline.

In my opinion this is the first stepping stone towards the end of brick-and-mortar stores. If in the future e-commerce retailers manage to pair these AI capabilities with technologies like Augmented Reality, which gives people the opportunity to try on clothes from home, there is more or less no incentive left for consumers to visit brick-and-mortar stores.

I am open to discuss this in the comments. What do you think are challenges to this advancement?

References
Tim Borovkov (April, 2017); ‘Importance of E-Commerce and online shopping and why to sell Online.’; Available:https://medium.com/@nyxonedigital/importance-of-e-commerce-and-online-shopping-and-why-to-sell-online-5a3fd8e6f416

Statista (2023); ‘Fashion e-commerce worldwide’; Available:https://www.statista.com/topics/9288/fashion-e-commerce-worldwide/#topicOverview 

Judd Dunagan (July, 2024); ‘Online Shopping Vs. Offline Shopping. Trends and Future Development Predictions’; Available:https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/online-shopping-vs-offline-trends-future-development-judd-dunagan-75kze/ 

Bernard Marr; ‘The Amazing Ways Retail Giant Zalando Is Using Artificial Intelligence’; Available:https://bernardmarr.com/the-amazing-ways-retail-giant-zalando-is-using-artificial-intelligence/

Zalando Press (April, 2023); ‘Zalando to launch a fashion assistant powered by ChatGPT’; Available:https://corporate.zalando.com/en/technology/zalando-launch-fashion-assistant-powered-chatgpt

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