GENEVA — At the IWC Schaffhausen booth at the Clocks and Wonders show in the convention center this spring, Maurice Moitroux, IWC’s associate director of brand marketing, gestured to a large, clunky beige device sitting on a counter near the entrance.
“It looks like a microwave, but it’s actually a computer,” he said.
Intending to conjure up the retro-futuristic vibe of IWC’s new Ingenieur watch collection, an update of a 1976 model designed by Gerald Genta, the old ncr monitorDating from the 1980s, it was one of several period artifacts on display in and around the stand, including an experimental Mercedes-Benz C 111-III car from the 1970s.
However, the computer contained something unexpected: a ChatGPT 3.5 series module connected to a voice-activated application created to answer questions about Mr. Genta, who died in 2011, leaving behind a well-documented watchmaking legacy.
The exhibit was an apt metaphor for the luxury watch industry’s ongoing relationship with artificial intelligence. On the surface, AI is still something of a flop, and few brand executives are willing to discuss it publicly. (However, a group of tech industry leaders recently signed an open letter warning about the existential threat can represent for humanity.)
Behind the scenes at big brands like Cartier and Panerai, however, machine learning, a subset of AI that involves training machines to learn from data, is quietly revolutionizing the way watches are made and marketed.
A handful of watchmakers have admitted to using ChatGPT to generate quick social media copy and the AI-based design platform Midjourney to create wacky mood boards (as in, “We want to make a shop and make it look like it’s under the water in the Maldives,” said George Bamford, a London-based watch customizer, on a recent call.)
But very few communicate openly about it.
“Today, the watch industry sells a high-end luxury experience,” Serge Maillard, editor of trade magazine Europa Star, said by phone from Geneva. “If AI can be used to elevate the experience, then the term AI could be a bit more present in the discourse. But as long as something else remains in the background, it will be in the shadows.
Mr Maillard said that one of the reasons why the industry has not shown more enthusiasm for AI than for technological innovations such as NFT, blockchain and the metaverse it could have to do with last year’s collapse of the NFT and cryptocurrency markets, which made them wary of unproven technologies.
“AI is a quieter revolution than NFTs, but a deeper revolution,” he said. “It’s something that everyone could use one day.”
For the handful of executives who have embraced it, AI has proven transformative.
“It’s saving me time with my design team on research, mood boarding,” Mr Bamford, founder of the Bamford Watch Department, said during a recent phone call. “I now freely admit that instead of going to Pinterest and Google for images, I am putting text in Midjourney that will create a unique image. It does not inform the design, but it initiates the narrative.
“I wouldn’t use it to design a watch,” he said. “I’ve tried it several times and it always comes back as something you don’t want to see.”
Benjamin Arabov, chief executive of Jacob & Co., said he had a similarly disappointing design experience with AI when he used text messages to generate a watch image. The concepts were impossible to manufacture, “like a waterfall flying off the clock,” he said at a company event in Geneva in March.
However, Mr. Arabov has found AI useful for copywriting, especially for social media. “ChatGPT has become a very good resource,” he said. “’Here is all this information about this watch. Now, elegantly explain this watch in 100 words, because no one is going to read past that.”
algorithms at work
In the realm of manufacturing, watchmakers have used algorithm-driven machinery for at least the last five years. At Roger Dubuis, a system called Jarvis, after the loyal butler from Marvel Comics’ “Iron Man,” “helps regulate the machines, tells us if they’re not so precise anymore and if they talk to each other,” Nicola Andreatta, chief executive of Roger Dubuis, said in Watches and Wonders Geneva.
Panerai, which, like Roger Dubuis, is owned by Compagnie Financière Richemont, employs a similar system that has been in place for about two years, said Jérôme Cavadini, the brand’s chief operating officer.
“We connect machines with machines and they talk to each other,” Cavadini said in Watches and Wonders. “We are able to detect when we are supposed to change the tools, and we can adjust their speed, detect temperature deltas and act accordingly to modify the digital configuration of the machine.”
Where AI, or machine learning, is poised to have the biggest impact on the watch industry is in helping to anticipate demand and speed products to market.
“We develop algorithms and use them on a monthly basis to spot sales trends, and especially the deviation from the standard forecasts we make,” Mr. Cavadini said. “The point is to connect demand with supply.”
The demand planning system, which Panerai implemented in September, helps the brand detect which products are running out of stock in certain markets to optimize their distribution. “Make the right item, for the right market, at the right time,” Cavadini wrote in a follow-up email.
During a press roundtable event at Cartier’s booth at Watches and Wonders, Cyrille Vigneron, the brand’s chief executive, said AI was also transforming that brand’s demand planning and implementation models, and even providing to Cartier information about the behaviors and attitudes of customers.
“With so much data coming from call centers or web queries or even what words customers are using in comments or on their own social media, you have a lot of words,” Vigneron said. “By trying to identify these words or some meanings behind them, it’s the opposite of ChatGPT: you’re not trying to create content, you’re trying to understand what it means. For example, you have a new product on the way and you may have a big spike in social media, which means maybe it’s a good time to ramp up your output before it’s visible in sales.”
Mr. Vigneron stressed that AI would not alter Cartier’s approach to design, which he described as entirely supply-driven.
“When we redesign something old but very new like the Tank Normale, we don’t know if it will appeal to the public, and that’s part of the beauty of this sector,” he said. “We’re not trying to make an algorithm knowing what customers would want, but trying to make things that we think are beautiful and hoping to find an audience for them.
“What we’ve done for the last five years is clearly be ourselves,” Mr. Vigneron said. “That is collective intelligence, and not artificial.”
expansion plans
Brands are not the only entities in the watch world looking to optimize their operations with AI
Wristcheck, a Hong Kong retailer of second-hand watches, plans to introduce what it calls Wristcheck Intelligence this year. It’s machine learning-powered market analysis software that “understands complex data patterns to select an index and suggest ideal prices for our sellers,” Austen Chu, the company’s founder, wrote in an email.
“This software, a proprietary product of our internal development, has been in our model since the beginning of this year,” he wrote, adding that it “exemplifies how AI can facilitate a deeper understanding of market conditions.”
Yet despite the efficiency-boosting potential of AI, many, if not most, watchmakers remain skeptical.
“I’m not against it because you have to be curious and in sync with your time,” said Philippe Delhotal, creative director of Hermès’ watchmaking division, at Watches and Wonders. “But I think that the human being has that capacity to bring warmth, doubt, uncertainty, which artificial intelligence does not have. Artificial intelligence is cold, it is calculated. I think the margin of human error is what gives some things their charm.”
However, some AI advocates are keen to minimize the number of humans they need to interact with in the course of making and selling their watches.
Ben Waite is one. As a watch designer at his family business, Titan Black, a London company that specializes in bespoke watches, Waite grew tired of working with so many different craftsmen, he said in a recent video call. The slow process was also complicated by the fact that the original manufacturer’s warranty on the watches he customized was voided by his work, he added.
Titan Black stopped taking orders about two years ago, and about a year later, Waite fell down the AI rabbit hole. Now, he is preparing to present a company that uses a combination of artificial intelligence software and a 3D product configurator to design watches with custom details and view them from multiple angles, speeding up the custom design process.
“My first job at Titan Black was designing watches and now, sure enough, I’m out of a job,” Waite said. “Now I can generate 20 to 30 designs right away. The software is designed to help me serve more customers and get to the point faster.”
“I’m trying to build an entire company with as few people as possible and have everything run on AI,” Waite added. “That is my dream: to have to deal with as few humans as possible. I’m very good at doing things, but not very good at managing people.”
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