Luxury and Artificial Intelligence: When Customers Set the Pace for Luxury Brands
The luxury sector is undergoing a paradoxical transformation. While major luxury houses are still fine-tuning their digital strategies, their customers have already crossed the Rubicon into the world of artificial intelligence. According to the fifth edition of the “Luxury and Technology” report produced by Bain & Company in collaboration with the Comité Colbert, a gap is widening between consumer behavior and the technological agility of brands.
The study, conducted in April 2026 among customers in China, the United States, and France, reveals widespread adoption of AI in the purchasing journey. However, there is a marked geographical contrast: while 64% of Chinese consumers and 54% of Americans used AI for their most recent luxury purchase, only 27% of French consumers have taken the plunge. Notably, the higher the budget, the more indispensable the tool becomes: 82% of “top spenders” now incorporate artificial intelligence into their shopping experience, compared to just 28% of occasional shoppers.
The Quest for Greater Efficiency
Why the craze? Customers aren’t just looking for a gimmick, but for real added value. 68% of respondents praise the speed and objectivity of the decision-making process, while 55% see it as a way to feel reassured about the quality and technical details of products. Even more surprising, 52% of users say that AI allows them to discover options or brands they would never have considered otherwise. Once they’ve tried it, there seems to be no turning back: 97% of users say they want to repeat the experience.
However, this technological adoption is taking place against the backdrop of a challenging market. Since the post-pandemic euphoria of 2022, the luxury sector has lost approximately 70 million active customers, even as the global pool of high-net-worth individuals continues to grow. To capture this new audience, AI is becoming a critical lever that companies are still struggling to fully harness.
The Peril of Algorithmic Invisibility
One of the report’s most crucial findings concerns brand visibility. In the age of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), control over brand image is slipping from the hands of luxury houses. 90% of the information generated by AI engines to respond to a query about luxury comes from third-party sources: trade publications, blogs, customer reviews, or secondhand platforms. Official brand websites account for only 10% of the database used by the algorithms.
Even more concerning for marketing departments is that 70% of user queries do not mention any brand names. It is the AI that selects and suggests the names. Nathalie Remy, a senior partner at Bain & Company, points out that certain long-established brands are now underrepresented in these automated responses, to the benefit of niche brands—particularly in watchmaking and skincare—which “compete above their category ” thanks to better algorithmic resonance.
Moving from experimentation to business impact
On the corporate side, AI is now a strategic priority for 80% of executives. But investment remains cautious when it comes to the end customer. While AI adoption in support functions has risen from 6% in 2024 to 31% today, “customer-facing” tools have stagnated at 21%. To date, only one in ten luxury brand has deployed AI assistants on a large scale for its in-store sales associates with convincing results.
“Customers have moved faster than the fashion houses,” says Joëlle de Montgolfier, executive vice president at Bain & Company. For the expert, the urgency is twofold: it is no longer just a matter of conducting internal tests, but of transforming these trials into a real impact on revenue. To avoid becoming invisible in the new discovery ecosystems, luxury brands will have to learn to speak the language of algorithms just as well as they master the language of craftsmanship.