AI+ METAVERSE FASHION NEWS OF THE WEEK 04.09.2023
GUCCI IS DESIGNING PHYGITAL GOODS FOR BORED APE’S METAVERSE WORLD
The latest step in?Gucci’s metaverse storytelling is an ongoing partnership with Bored Ape Yacht Club parent company?Yuga Labs, including a limited-edition digital pendant with a physical counterpart.
Gucci is partnering with NFT community Bored Ape Yacht Club on a new metaverse initiative that builds on past projects, harnessing fictional characters and storylines to engage and reward the most rapt of fans. And this time, those fans can cop physical Gucci gear.
Following the announcement last week of a years-long partnership with BAYC parent company Yuga Labs, today, Gucci has announced that it will appear in Otherside, the immersive, game-like, NFT-based virtual world inhabited by creatures called Kodas created by Yuga Labs. Ape and Mutant Ape NFT holders had first dibs on buying digital plots of land in Otherside via a native cryptocurrency called ApeCoin.
The Gucci project, which becomes available on 6 April, is called Otherside: Relics by Gucci, and it includes a phygital, limited-edition Gucci-branded pendant called a KodaPendant. The storyline builds on one currently being told on?Otherside’s Twitter account, centring around blue carved flasks that are turned into pendants. Eligible players must complete a series of tasks to be able to purchase a digital pendant, of which only 3,333 are available. The storytelling continues after the purchase, with pendants generating traits that unlock new features in Otherside, and access to a physical counterpart in the form of a GG-eyed Koda silver pendant, coming this summer.
Otherside, which is still in early testing, is only available to people who hold “Otherdeeds”, the term for the virtual Otherside real estate. In the past, projects like these have required ownership of multiple tokens and can require completions of various tasks or achievement of other thresholds.
Gucci teased the phygital pendant drop with this image, including an altered logo and the GG monogram. Photo: Gucci
When the partnership was announced last week, Gucci shared that it was “designed to extend the engagement between their respective communities by exploring the intersection between fashion and entertainment in the metaverse”. Gucci has yet to share specifics on how to access the experience or the NFT goods beyond the Otherside world.
Last year, Gucci CEO Marco Bizzarri?shared pointed words on the potential he sees in the space: “Anyone who says Web3 is a pretext to sell digital sneakers misses the point and ignores its potential. There are the sceptics who question whether the metaverse experience can be reconciled with the values of luxury — who question the point of the metaverse itself. Digital collectibles are a drop in an ocean whose boundaries are yet to be defined.”
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GENERATIVE AI HAS AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROBLEM
Generative AI, which uses data lakes and question snippets to recover patterns and relationships, is becoming more prevalent in creative industries. However, the legal implications of using generative AI are still unclear, particularly in relation to copyright infringement, ownership of AI-generated works, and unlicensed content in training data. Courts are currently trying to establish how intellectual property laws should be applied to generative AI, and several cases have already been filed. To protect themselves from these risks, companies that use generative AI need to ensure that they are in compliance with the law and take steps to mitigate potential risks, such as ensuring they use training data free from unlicensed content and developing ways to show provenance of generated content.
Generative AI can seem like magic. Image generators such as Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, or DALL·E 2 can?produce remarkable visuals?in styles from aged photographs and water colors to pencil drawings and Pointillism. The resulting products can be fascinating — both quality and speed of creation are elevated compared to average human performance. The Museum of Modern Art in New York hosted an AI-generated?installation?generated from the museum’s own collection, and the Mauritshuis in The Hague hung an AI variant of Vermeer’s?Girl with a Pearl Earring?while the original was away on loan.
The capabilities of text generators are perhaps even more striking, as they write essays, poems, and summaries, and are proving adept mimics of style and form (though they can take creative license with facts).
While it may seem like these new AI tools can conjure new material from the ether, that’s not quite the case. Generative AI platforms are trained on data lakes and question snippets — billions of parameters that are constructed by software processing huge archives of images and text. The AI platforms recover patterns and relationships, which they then use to create rules, and then make judgments and predictions, when responding to a prompt.
This process comes with legal risks, including intellectual property infringement. In many cases, it also poses legal questions that are still being resolved. For example, does copyright, patent, trademark infringement apply to AI creations? Is it clear who owns the content that generative AI platforms create for you, or your customers? Before businesses can embrace the benefits of?generative AI, they need to understand the risks — and how to protect themselves.
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DECENTRALAND METAVERSE FASHION WEEK ATTENDANCE PLUMMETS 76% AMID "WORRISOME" TRADING VOLUME
?? Fashion Week attendance on Decentraland dropped to 26,000 from 108,000. Barely more than 1,000 people were online simultaneously during the four-day event.
?? Weekly trading volumes for land NFTs are about $50,000, as only 20 to 30 people are buying and selling Decentraland property. Volumes previously were in the millions.
Decentraland recently wrapped its four-day virtual fashion week. It would be hard to argue it was a success.
While the metaverse platform?attracted 108,000 “unique attendees" last year, the company said only 26,000 attended this year, a dramatic decline of 76% for the event that ran from March 28 through March 31.?Despite top brands like?DOLCE&GABBANA?,?Tommy Hilfiger?and?adidas?all sponsoring shows, a?Decentraland?spokesperson said the most people signed in at one time barely eclipsed 1,000 people.?
? Decentraland winter
Decentraland’s gameplay, design and reliability have all been criticized and may be why the platform is a disappointment for many.
The platform, originally founded?by Argentinian coders?Esteban Ordano?and?Ari Meilich,?officially opened?to the public in early 2020.
Metaverse architect?Hunter Swihart?said he enjoys creating digital spaces for?Decentraland?but added that he has been disappointed by how many people are using the platform. “I thought because of how much people were talking about it that it would be popular,” he said.
?? Weekly trading volumes
Near the end of 2021, when metaverse, crypto and NFT hype was at its frothiest, one Decentraland plot of land sold to Metaverse Group for $2.43 million. Metaverse Group didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
Now weekly trading volumes hover around a dismal $50,000 a week, a far cry from trading volumes that consistently exceeded $1 million per week through the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022, according to The Block research.
?? Decentraland landowners
The total number of Decentraland landowners is also low, according to Kay, who said most NFT projects have a minimum of 30% unique holders (individual wallets that own the non-fungible tokens). In the case of Decentraland, of the 98,000 land NFTs in existence, only 8% are unique holders. That means about 7,800 people own all land on the platform.
This is “likely a result of big whales, insiders, or others hoarding supply,” said Kay, who pointed out it appears Decentraland still owns about 67,000 plots of land.
Decentraland’s native token, called mana, has also suffered to a large degree amid the prolonged bearish market which is casting a shadow of the entire crypto industry. After briefly surpassing $5.00 in late 2021, it now?trades at about $0.60. Mana’s market cap has fallen from about $6.8 billion to about $1.1 billion.
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HOW TO BUILD A GOOD VIRTUAL STORE? OBSESS WANTS TO HELP
Virtual store creator?Obsess, which has helped brands including?Charlotte Tilbury Beauty,?Coach?and?FERRAGAMO?to launch virtual retail spaces, now wants to help brands build their own. A new tool called Ava by?Obsess?lets them create virtual stores in-house — it’s like?Shopify?for?virtual stores, says CEO?Neha Singh.
The Ava content management system (CMS) was originally developed for use by Obsess’s in-house team, and it will provide 3D editing and rendering tech to brands in a “no-code” format, Singh says. This means that brands who subscribe to the software can independently add and place products, embed media content and customise merchandising and styling setups including font and colour. In addition to media, brands will be able to add gamification elements and educational content, embed social media integrations and introduce avatars to their spaces.
Virtual stores, seen as a three-dimensional, immersive alternative to the standard e-commerce format, have surged in popularity since the pandemic. While many began as replacements for in-person shopping, or experimental pop-ups, they have since evolved into more permanent destinations, catering to consumers who grew up playing, socialising and shopping on platforms such as?Roblox. The next step is for brands to bring virtual stores in-house, Singh says. “Brands need to keep their virtual experiences fresh, just like their websites.”
Often accessible via a link on a brand’s website, virtual stores offer a standalone, branded destination, as opposed to a virtual presence within an existing external platform. This gives the brands more control over the experience, and access to customer behavioural data, as more invest in digital goods and AR. In June 2021, Obsess raised $10 million in a Seed A funding round. In January, competitor?Emperia, which has built stores for?Tommy Hilfiger?and?Christian Dior Couture, also raised $10 million in Series A funding.
“Virtual stores all have a set of common capabilities. Ava is the builder that puts all of this into the hands of the brands to set most of these up themselves,” Singh says.?
About 90 per cent of virtual store functionality can now be set up using Ava, according to the company. To get started, brands need a 3D model of the space, which is typically produced in 3D graphics programmes like 3ds Max or Autodesk Maya. These produce a standard-format file that Obsess then uses to produce the store. Obsess might produce this file (especially in the short-term as brands experiment), other times a retailer or agency can do so. For product displays, brands can incorporate 2D images or 3D product files, given that not all will have the latter on-hand.?
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MAKING THE MOST OUT OF VIRTUAL RETAIL
Forbes?by?Olga Dogadkina, CEO of?Emperia
As the popularity of virtual commerce continues to grow and the metaverse emerges as a new frontier for business opportunities, brands are increasingly prioritizing virtual stores over physical ones. Placing a store within the metaverse not only significantly impacts the potential reach of the space and enhances accessibility but provides far more shopping flexibility and convenience for customers. But how do they make the most out of this new technology?
Brands across a variety of industries are being provided with new opportunities to expand their presence and give their customers a new and enhanced experience through means of virtual experiences. These virtual spaces offer several advantages over their physical counterparts when used in a silo or as a space complementing a brand’s brick-and-mortar store. First and foremost, they’re flexible and offer cost-effective solutions, making them a viable option for global businesses looking to scale their audience.
Geographically, these stores can be accessed from anywhere in the world, providing users have access to a device with a stable internet connection. This not only enables brand reach to go beyond that of a local town but means the e-commerce store can be accessed at any time, from anywhere. Convenience is key in this day and age, and virtual experiences provide exactly this.
When you look at customer behavior shifts since the pandemic, far more consumers expect to be able to shop virtually, and fewer actually have the motivation to trek to a physical store. With a global population of around 7.74 billion people, it is noteworthy that over?2.14 billion people engaged in online shopping activities in 2021. This translates to roughly one in four individuals participating in e-commerce, highlighting the widespread adoption of online shopping as a preferred mode of consumption.
Virtual stores can be more sustainable than physical spaces, helping brands reduce their impact on the environment. This is a pressing priority for brands but is also increasingly important amongst environmentally-conscious customer bases who prioritize sustainability in their purchasing decisions.
One of the biggest advantages of having a virtual store is the flexibility they provide brands with. It’s incredibly easy to update products, displays, wall features, ads, etc., whereas looking at a physical store, making changes can be time-consuming and expensive. Brands can change product displays or add new products at relatively short notice in response to data providing information on customer movements or hot spots or to respond to a product launch.
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WHAT TO EXPECT AT THE FIRST AI FASHION WEEK
Launching later this month, AI Fashion Week promotes AI as a tool for fashion and supports emerging designers working with the technology. Three winners’ garments will be produced physically and sold by?REVOLVE?Group.
"A new fashion week is coming to New York – and, as interest in the potential of AI reaches fever pitch, it couldn’t be better timed. The first?AI Fashion Week?(20-21 April), held at Soho’s Spring Studios, is showcasing collections from emerging AI designers.?
Backed by Spring Studios and e-commerce retailer?REVOLVE?Group, the event is making the case for AI as a tool for fashion design, supporting new designers working with the still-nascent technology. An opening event on the evening of 20 April is for media, VIPs and participants, while the space is open all day on 21 April to the public.
Participants have until 15 April to submit a collection of 15 to 30 looks, which will be judged by the public via?online?and in-person voting, promoted on the social media channels of AI Fashion Week (AIFW), Spring Studios and Revolve, as well as through Revolve’s expansive influencer network. More than 350 submissions have been received to date. Ten finalists proceed to round two in May, with three winners selected by a panel including?Tiffany Godoy,?Vogue?Japan’s head of editorial content;?Natalie Hazzout, Celine head of men’s casting;?Erika W.-Sneyd, VP of Adidas’s Three Stripes Studio;?Matthew Drinkwater, head of London College of Fashion’s Fashion Innovation Agency; and?Michael Mente,?REVOLVE?CEO and co-founder.
The winners will receive support from AIFW’s fashion-tech incubator in partnership with Revolve. A key requirement is that the garments must be possible to produce physically, and the winning collections will be made and sold online, either via Revolve or Fwrd, Revolve’s luxury site, depending on the garments. Designers will receive support throughout the launch process, including with pattern making, sample development and marketing and communications.?
“The idea is to come back to the real world,” says?Cyril Foiret, founder of digital publication?Trendland?and AI creative studio Maison Meta, which is producing AIFW. Maison Meta previously worked with?Moncler?on the AI-generated?Genius?campaign. The event is specifically designed to bridge the physical and the digital. “It’s about mixing both worlds together,” Foiret says."
AUGMENTED REALITY HELPS BRANDS TELL THEIR STORY: MVFW 2023
The?second annual Metaverse Fashion Week?(MVFW) hit the virtual runway this year from March 28–31 via a collaboration between?Spatial?— a 3D social network platform — and Over, a blockchain-based augmented reality (AR) platform.
This year’s event saw over 60 brands, including legacy names such as?DOLCE&GABBANA,?Tommy Hilfiger,?The Donna Karan Company, LLC.?and?Gucci. Like last year, the event combined digital runways, panels with industry thought leaders and designers, and afterparties.
However, one of the main attractions occurred on the event’s last day, March 31, when a hybrid AR runway from Over was cast across the Piazza of Duomo di Milano — one of Milan’s most iconic locations.
Diego Di Tommaso, the co-founder and chief operating officer of?Over the Reality, told?Cointelegraph?that core components of the fashion industry include projecting identities and creating narratives around brands.
“AR, specifically, is regarded as the new and exciting medium that allows brands to tell their stories and showcase their creations more compellingly and intuitively.”
Tommaso said the “impression, understanding and emotion” that consumers get from an item presented in AR vs. 2D is incomparable. According to the co-founder, AR catwalks, augmented shop windows and AR virtual try-on are?only scratching the surface?of what’s to come for the fashion industry.?
“As soon as consumer-ready smart glasses hit the market, there will be no brand without an AR strategy.”
This AR runway featured large-scale virtual models who paraded across the plaza in cutting-edge digital designs from the participating brands, including?Balmain?x?Space Runners?and?PET LIGER, part of the?Gucci?“VAULT” project. Even some notable Bored Ape Yacht Club personalities walked the runway.?
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RALPH LAUREN TO ACCEPT CRYPTO PAYMENTS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BITPAY
Ralph Lauren?fashion company has partnered with?BitPay?to start accepting Bitcoin payments in its newly-opened store in Miami’s Design District. The company is also teaming up with the Poolsuite Web3 community to launch a co-branded non-fungible token or NFT.
Ralph Lauren will accept crypto payments at the said store, which will become the first location of the brand to do so. Through its partnership with BitPay, customers will be able to pay for their purchases using Bitcoin (BTC),?Polygon Labs’s MATIC, and Ether (ETH).
As per?CoinDesk, the leading fashion brand will also release NFTs together with Poolsuite. These digital tokens are set to be given as gifts to existing holders of the Poolsuite NFT membership collection. The members will also have exclusive access to a "special event" and update their avatars with virtual Ralph Lauren wearables.
"This store will be an opportunity for us as a brand to gather key insights as we continue to explore the space," David Lauren, chief innovation and branding officer at Ralph Lauren, said in an interview with?WWD. "We are in the early stages of our road map, but we see an exciting opportunity ahead across digital goods and virtual experiences to build upon our past touchpoints in the metaverse."
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METAVERSE FASHION WEEK HAD BIG BRANDS BUT FEW PEOPLE
Decentraland’s Metaverse Fashion Week featured virtual clothes and exhibits from some major names in fashion, but it was lonely, difficult to navigate, and pretty boring."
"Brands are starting to experiment more with what’s possible in virtual social spaces like Decentraland, and big companies like Meta, Epic Games, and Roblox are trying to make their so-called metaverses attractive for those brands, too. But Metaverse Fashion Week is just the latest example of a clunky digital space that seems to exist only for the companies that make it, not for the users that actually visit."
"The actual layout of Metaverse Fashion Week felt kind of like a county fair. As my virtual avatar, I spent a lot of time running between elaborate virtual buildings of all different shapes, colors, and sizes — one reminded me of a giant witch’s hat that had been placed on Earth by aliens. Inside capsules throughout the plaza, digital non-player humans modeled all sorts of clothes, like a blue sweater covered in Adidas logos."
"While it was nice that I could jump into Metaverse Fashion Week right from my computer whenever I wanted, that was pretty much the best thing about it. Metaverse Fashion Week wasn’t fun to visit. It was a weird digital version of the type of event that would be more interesting — and social — to experience through surfing social media or going in person. It also rarely took advantage of the potential of a digital space — I was hoping for more places like Coach’s strange Tabby bag UFO instead of walking into yet another virtual store.
And successful metaverse spaces usually have something for people to do with their friends;?Roblox?and?Fortnite?are popular places to play games, and even?Horizon Worlds?has some great community-made spaces?for things like comedy. But shopping in silence, like I was during Metaverse Fashion Week? Let’s just say I probably won’t be back next year."
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FASHION BRANDS MUST CATCH UP TO AI, NOT HALT PROGRESS
"AI is having a moment. International governments are stumped by its progress and have been slow to leverage the possibility of automation and technology whilst at the same time creating laws to protect privacy and cyber security.
With countries like Italy calling for a suspension of ChatGPT and tech leaders including Elon Musk signing an open letter to pause development until shared safety protocols are put in place, the debate continues to raise concerns on both sides of the issue.
But how do you halt technology?
AI is good for fashion. Early predictions say it could generate up to 275 billion dollars in profits for the sector.
A report released by?McKinsey & Company?last winter said one of the business uses for AI relevant to the fashion industry is the ability to craft personalised marketing, social media, and technical sales content (including text, images, and video); creating assistants aligned to specific businesses, such as retail.
While ChatGPT is still in its infancy and can certainaly recount inaccurate information, the innovations that generative AI could ignite for businesses of all sizes and levels of technological proficiency are truly exciting, says McKinsey. One warning, however: “executives will want to remain acutely aware of the risks that exist at this early stage of the technology’s development.”
AI uses for fashion
“From co-designing to accelerating content development processes, AI creates new space for creativity. It can ingest all forms of ‘unstructured’ data (raw text, images and video) and produce new forms of media, ranging from fully written scripts to 3D designs and realistic virtual models for video campaigns,” McKinsey states.
Dutch denim brand?G-Star RAW, a pioneer in digital fashion, unveiled a twelve piece denim collection last week. The novelty was its creation using AI via the Midjourney app. The idea for the project was born after the brand created a digital fashion group, inviting people from different departments with a common interest in innovation and technology. Their goal was to experiment with new techniques and explore the potential of AI in design as both a creative outlet and a way to reduce waste."
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THREE CHALLENGES THE METAVERSE WILL NEED TO OVERCOME
What will the Internet of tomorrow look like
?? Interoperability
Many believe that for the metaverse to become the next iteration of the internet, it will need to be “interoperable”. That is to say, the virtual worlds that constitute the metaverse must be able to freely exchange data.?
Perhaps the most widely discussed rationale is for digital assets, which are seen as foundational to the metaverse economy. If you buy an item in one virtual world, perhaps a sweatshirt for your avatar, you should be able to use that in another virtual world—if you can’t, then it has limited value. But other forms of interoperability are also viewed as important, such as being able to take your identity, history, and payment methods with you on your travels around the metaverse.
?? The hardware
If you had believed much of the tech rhetoric a decade ago, you would have expected XR to be everywhere by now. Sure, today there are a number of headsets on the market—and, yes, these are considerably more advanced than anything that was available when XR re-emerged as a hot topic in the early 2010s. But despite billions of investment dollars and exponential advances in computing, XR has still not yet been “solved”.?
One of the reasons for that disconnect, is that creating high-performing, convenient, affordable XR hardware is more difficult than it might intuitively seem. In a Meta earnings call in 2021, Mark Zuckerberg reflected on what he saw as the main challenge: miniaturization. “In augmented reality, you’re going to really need a pair of glasses that look like normal looking glasses in order for that to hit a mainstream acceptance. And that, I think, is going to be one of the hardest technical challenges of the decade. It’s basically fitting a supercomputer in the frame of glasses.”?
?? Compelling use cases
Technology is not deterministic. No matter how hard the industry tries to will something into existence, it will ultimately be down to consumers to decide whether it adds value to their lives.
From a psychological and technological point of view, the leap from 2D to 3D is much greater than the jump from desktop to mobile. For the metaverse to take off, the added value would have to justify the leap.
Moller agrees that finding those impactful apps is crucial. “If the metaverse is meant to be a social space, you need to have a critical mass of people, and give those people enough of a reason to be in there.”?
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1 年Gucci: A Timeless Icon in the World of Luxury Fashion Gucci, the iconic Italian fashion and leather goods brand, has a rich history and an unparalleled reputation for luxury and quality. From its inception in 1921 by Guccio Gucci to its current position as a global fashion powerhouse, it has undergone transformations, challenges, and resurgences that have shaped its journey. In this article, we'll delve into the brand's history, its strategies in the digital age, its marketing prowess, and its promising future plans. To read more... https://vichaardhara.co.in/index.php/2023/09/19/gucci-a-timeless-icon-in-the-world-of-luxury-fashion/
Serial Tech Founder | AI, Blockchain & AR Visionary | $12M Raised | Building the Future of Web3 & AI Autonomy
1 年I think there may be issues with walled garden approaches being attempted in the beginning, and this may hinder mass adoption. The most interoperable space is the physical world, and phygital twinning is vitally important, gaining mass adoption via familiarity.
Sales Associate at American Airlines
1 年Thanks for sharing
Technology & Growth Advisor to Global Fashion industry in 50+ countries for 40+ years | ??AI for Fashion & Apparel ?? ??Enterprise Digital Transformation Simplified??
1 年????
Sales Associate at American Airlines
1 年Thanks for posting