AI wants to do your shopping for you: Not complete a grocery shop from a list you already made, but choose drip it reckons you might like and order it to your house.
The concept, which has been dubbed a shopping ‘agent’ (but is not an agent at all, but anthropomorphized AI technology that can carry out tasks) is being spearheaded by AI engine Perplexity, which, in November, introduced a feature that can recommend garments based on criteria, and then complete the checkout.
But Perplexity isn’t the only brand exploring the ‘agents.’ According to Business of Fashion, Google and OpenAI are also looking into them, while per an article in Wired, Amazon is in the process of prototyping autonomous AI agents that could suggest products on its site, and even add them to users’ shopping carts. And the agents won't stop there: Amazon hopes that one day they’ll be able to gauge your taste via an image of your wardrobe, and shop for you accordingly.
Granted, it’s impossible to say whether or not shopping agents will actually catch on, though the consultancy firm Gartner has forecast that over half of consumers will routinely shop for goods and services using them by 2027. Having said that, it’s more likely that people will use the agents to complete their bi-monthly coffee pod order than select which designer trench they swing for. Having said that, we used to think using AI bots as a friend, boyfriend, or therapist was insane, and look at us now. It's also worth nothing that given the role algorithms play on what brands and clothes are recommended to us, technology already plays a large part in curating our wardrobes.
So what does all this mean for, well, taste? Or for the imagination that goes into getting dressed? It’s generally accepted that fashion is an art form, or at the very least a creative process— a means of self-expression that tells a story to the outside world, before we even open our mouths. It also reflects and challenges the social and political climate, and has been employed as a means of protest from the Black Panthers’s berets—which symbolized resistance—to the hippies who protested consumerism via patched denim, and, more recently, Julia Fox’s male gaze deterrent “ugly makeup.”
The culture has proven that we’re passive consumers and tech users. There’s no vote on whether or not this kind of technology will be implemented into the systems we already use (regardless of AI’s ethical and environmental repercussions). We’ll likely end up using it by osmosis, just as when we Google something, AI now offers us a summary of information (with or without our consent).
Not to be dramatic, but AI taking over personal style feels like a dystopian move that could not only hinder us creatively but also…silence us?
