ASOS uses Azure AI Foundry to surprise and delight young fashion lovers

Overview

UK fashion retailer ASOS used Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI prompt flow (part of Azure AI Foundry) with ChatGPT language models to build a conversational, AI-powered shopping experience that curates fashion recommendations based on customer preferences and trend data. The team built a working prototype in a few weeks, tested it with 150 internal users plus a sample of real customers with zero safety or security red flags, and verified the absence of jailbreaks during that initial testing; ASOS is confident that Azure AI Content Safety, built into Azure AI Foundry, will play a key role in assuring responsible, top-quality interactions as it moves toward wider customer testing.

The challenge

With the recent prevalence of generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, ASOS recognized a triple opportunity to expand its business model, enrich its technology infrastructure, and meet the modern tech expectations of its young customers. “Our customers can use search, visual search, and browsing to find our products, but we wanted to try something that was conversational,” says Cliff Cohen, Chief Technology Officer at ASOS.

The solution

The company chose to use Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and Azure AI prompt flow to build an AI-powered experience that customers could interact with as soon as they arrive on the ASOS website or app. ASOS saw the chance to use Azure AI to handle ChatGPT language models at scale. The ASOS team used prompt flow, part of Azure AI Foundry, to explore language model-powered generative AI options and accelerate secure development of the solution, using Azure OpenAI Service models and prompt flow to communicate and orchestrate workflows between various services using internal authentication APIs. Empowered by these Azure services, ASOS built a prototype in just a few weeks that engages customers to learn about their preferences, brings in trend data from external sources and ASOS's own designers and trendsetters, and helps shoppers quickly find relevant purchase options.

Reported business value

ASOS tested the prototype with 150 internal users plus a sampling of real customers and recorded zero red flags in terms of safety and security, giving the team confidence to proceed toward scaling the experience. He adds that new AI-powered experience surprised and thrilled users with genuine shopping insights, personalized conversations, naturalism, and even humor that enlivened the shopping journey. ASOS has since developed the early prototype into a proof of concept and is performing final tests for scalability before making the features more widely available.