Karl Lagerfeld has introduced generative AI (genAI) to help with content creation and SEO performance across its online platform.

The technology, developed by Akeneo, is also helping the fashion brand transcribe languages for product description pages across its international markets.

The company's online platform currently serves 33 countries in nine languages and features an assortment of approximately 1,800 products which are refreshed with new collections every six months.

The genAI rollout has meant that the fashion house no longer needs to hire two external freelance copywriters for content creation.

After embedding AI into its product experience, the brand has moved to a single content editor role which involves "fine-tuning" product content edits and providing feedback to improve AI prompts.

The company’s senior manager e-commerce training said that the process has been a collaborative combination of human resource coaching and refining the automation.

"We represent the designer, so our tone of voice is very important to our branding," explained Yoko Fujimoto-Sital. "AI can struggle to fully interpret the brand’s tone of voice and it is crucial not to lose that, so we still need our human brand custodians to fine tune our product copy.”

Fujimoto-Sital went on to say that its transition to a hybrid human-genAI model has given the company a "deeper understanding of its product content creation strategies" and has resulted in a product content guide that covers its entire product experience strategy.

The technology has seen organic SEO traffic to product pages increase by five per cent while its add-to-cart rate has improved by 16 per cent.

Karl Lagerfeld currently has more than 200 mono-brand stores worldwide, with key locations in Paris, London, Munich, Moscow, New York, Dubai and Shanghai.

It also has a premium wholesale distribution network in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The announcement comes as many businesses across the fashion market roll out genAI to improve their operations, including luxury retailer Michael Kors, which last week became the first company to use Mastercard’s new genAI-powered shopping tool.

Shopping Muse is designed to help Michael Kors customers find the right outfit and accessories for any occasion by translating customers’ colloquial language into tailored product recommendations.

In March, it was announced that Puma was rolling out Google Cloud’s data, analytics and AI technology as part of plans to improve its e-commerce offering.

The sportswear giant said that the move would help it implement genAI shopping assistants, virtual try-ons, and AI-driven loyalty programmes.

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