The Tamesis
In 2026, the race for data will be as fierce as a modern gold rush thanks to the explosive growth of artificial intelligence. Tech companies want to know your jeans size, how you sleep, and even your favorite spot when you enter a store. At the same time, fashion brands are pursuing personalization and promising it as a benefit to improve the online and offline shopping experience.
Much of the promise of artificial intelligence for the future of retail and shopping—from hyper-personalized online recommendations and brand marketing, to in-store customer service that anticipates your needs—relies on as much data input as possible. It’s in the interest of companies like Meta and Google – whose business models rely on advertising for much of their revenue – to find new ways to collect increasing amounts of data, and they’ve invested heavily in data storage to stay competitive, with spending up 77% this year to a record $725 billion. As artificial intelligence makes personalization of advertising and customer service more commoditized, both tech companies and fashion brands will need more data to compete.
However, customers are showing signs of fatigue over how much data they are willing to provide. They also question whether giving up their data is worth the rewards they receive—the benefits that entire scraping is based on. when fashion business Hundreds of people were surveyed Fashion and Q Global Readers surveyed the use of AI and found that only 1% found AI shopping recommendations to be “completely useful”, less than a quarter (24%) trust AI-generated recommendations and summaries, and only 3% turned to AI chatbots for style inspiration. The output reported by respondents feels inconsistent or generic, which clearly indicates that the execution of AI tools is a factor that has hindered adoption to date.
Luxury customers in particular are now going to great lengths to protect their data privacy, opting out of data collection, targeted advertising, and even subscribing to encrypted digital services. Increasingly affluent and educated consumers are increasingly aware of the increased demand for personalization, which is bad news for luxury brands that rely on delivering high-touch, hyper-personalized customer experiences.
“It’s a very fine line for brands because obviously, there’s a lot of big business involved, but there’s more and more awareness that there’s some kind of abuse that’s going on,” said Carol Aquino, director of consumer technology at WGSN.
If privacy becomes the new luxury, how can brands adapt?
Agency is the new inequality
Privacy and data use by fashion companies using AI is fourth biggest concern fashion business AI survey respondents. As consumers become frustrated with the deluge of ads on social media and increasingly personalized targeting, Big Tech’s handling of personal data is increasingly part of the cultural conversation — a change accelerated by artificial intelligence. It has inspired various “offline” movements among young consumers, who in particular are increasingly turning to alternative platforms such as Reddit and Pinterest, which they view as less commercial.
This is driving a new industry shift between social platforms and towards paid, ad-free experiences as a benefit for those who can afford them. YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook have all recently launched paid subscriptions to ad-free versions of their platforms (which are known to mine data to target customers), and newer platforms like Vero and Mewe have been built around this model from the start.
“There’s no question that younger, more affluent consumers have the power to make these decisions because there’s a strong correlation between understanding these privacy issues and really understanding how these tools work,” Aquino said.
