Alibaba Empowers Fashion Retail with AI

An Alibaba Group artificial intelligence (AI) system is ready to recommend your next outfit at a concept store in Hong Kong showcasing a new model for the digitization of fashion retail.

Alibaba's FashionAI brings AI to the fashion world and offers customers personalized mix-and-match recommendations. With an ability to "learn" the latest fashion trends and tips from analysis of data generated by Alibaba's ecosystem, the proprietary model behind the technology is based on consumer insights from the ecosystem, images of more than 500,000 outfits put together by stylists on Taobao, as well as fashion expertise from Tmall partner brands. Cross-brand recommendations are also provided by consumers looking for the most fashion forward creative advice.

A concept store embodying the technology will open on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University campus from tomorrow to July 7.

"FashionAI embodies our thinking of what the future of fashion retail could look like, and an exploration of using technologies to better understand and cater to consumers' fashion needs," said Zhuoran Zhuang, Vice President, Alibaba Group.

"With the latest AI technologies, like machine learning and computing vision, FashionAI can now recommend items that match your personal style. That gives imagination to consumers and injects new ideas into fashion brands and retailers to rethink their business and sales models. Leveraging AI in fashion, therefore, offers many untapped opportunities for fashion retailers," he further added.

The deployment of FashionAI in a concept store is the latest showcase of how New Retail technologies can breathe new life into traditional offline retailing. New Retail is Alibaba's concept to seamlessly integrate online shopping and offline commerce to provide consumers with the ultimate of ease, convenience and choice.