Myntra launches AI-based personal style assistant

NEW DELHI: Myntra, Indias leading destination for fashion, beauty, and lifestyle, on Thursday introduced a revolutionary feature on the platform called 'My Stylist, an AI-powered end-to-end automated personal style guide for its customers.

This unique concept is set to revolutionise shopping for fashion and lifestyle at large, with the digital style assistant recommending the right outfits and suggesting a complete look to the users.

Ahead of the 18th edition of the highly-anticipated End of Reason Sale (EORS), its biannual fashion event, Myntra is all set to cater to the outfit styling aspirations of shoppers like never before and taking fashion to the next level with this next-gen product discovery and purchasing feature.

"The launch of 'My Stylist' takes our commitment to democratising fashion using technology, a notch higher! Powered by machine learning and AI-based technology, this first-of-its-kind innovation at scale in the fashion space in India, is poised to further take the customers' shopping experience to the next level by recommending looks with an understanding of fashion," said Raghu Krishnananda, Chief Product and Technology Officer, Myntra.

'My Stylist' has been created to tackle the daunting task of putting together the perfect outfit.

As styling requires a deep understanding of a broad range of properties, including colour, shape, pattern and fabric, along with awareness of current fashion trends and an individual's style preferences, to be able to get that perfect outfit, 'My Stylist' fulfils these requirements of customers in a way that is scalable, automated, customisable and in real-time.

'My Stylist' utilises AI to offer customers complete shoppable outfit recommendations based on four different factors -- uploaded images from their offline wardrobes, their purchase history on the app, browsing history on the app, and what's currently trending on the platform, thus giving instant access to styling options and enhancing their shopping experience, making it visual, fun and instantly gratifying.

The pioneering product has been developed in-house and will be unique to the platform, while also being a one-of-its-kind offering at this scale in the Indian e-commerce fashion ecosystem.

The feature throws recommendations from 4.5 lakh styles from the fashion and lifestyle categories currently, which includes all topwear, bottomwear, footwear and accessories.

Since the launch of the feature, 'My Stylist' has witnessed good adoption. It is currently the highest used feature on the floating action button or 'M-Explore' on the homepage of the app, with a high engagement rate and click-through rate (CTR) of over 65 per cent.

The company expects nearly 80 per cent of its customers to engage with recommendations from the 'My Stylist' feature on trial by the end of this year.

For customers who have shopped before on Myntra, My Stylist helps them find and shop for a complete look based on any apparel product they bought recently on the app, recently browsed products, or popular outfits on the platform based on which outfits are generating maximum engagement from users.

For new customers, the feature also enables them to upload images of any product from their offline wardrobe and get pairing ideas. New and existing users can also play around with the feature by taking a picture or uploading an image from their phone gallery of any offline product from their wardrobe and checking out pairing ideas to complete an outfit.

The feature lets users 'shop the entire look' at the click of a button.

Myntra's in-house artificial intelligence (AI) technology, machine learning (ML) models and computer vision algorithms, along with the expertise of subject matter experts in curation and styling, is used to power My Stylist's 'Fashion Object Detection', 'Image Search', and 'Outfit Recommendations' features.

These aspects use an AI algorithm that taps into the platform's catalogue data via deep convolutional neural networks and is also trained using a Bi-LTSM model that expands the dataset from Myntra's catalogue, which enables the feature to handle a high volume of requests.

The feature currently covers the fashion and lifestyle segments, with plans in the pipeline to include other categories including beauty and an increased number of styles as well.

Myntra also plans to include elements like 'Your Digital Wardrobe' and 'Save the Look', along with additional customizable user options, which consider factors like trends, age, gender, body type, and personal style, in subsequent phases.

Users can access 'My Stylist' via a floating action button on Myntra's homepage, with banners and picture-in-picture videos informing them about the same.