Brunello Cucinelli is revolutionising the concept of the website. The Italian luxury label specialising in cashmere has developed a totally disruptive new-generation website, combining “human creativity and artificial intelligence,” which was launched on July 16. Without pages or menus, the Solomei AI platform dedicated to this project, which also gave its name to the company that manages it, responds to queries from Internet users, combining different content as and when questions are asked. The brunellocucinelli.ai website, which focuses on the history and philosophy of the company and its eponymous founder, can be accessed at brunellocucinelli.com, alongside the brand’s corporate website and e-commerce site.
The label is therefore offering its customers an additional platform for a new experience, based on the use of AI. “We wanted to create a new generation of website that leverages human intelligence with the help of AI. We looked at the way in which traditional sites were constructed, with pages, indexes, menus, instructions for use, etc., which we removed in order to design something totally different and innovative, with a site that allows content to be freed up,” explained Francesco Bottigliero, Chief of Humanistic Technology at Brunello Cucinelli and Foro delle Arti, the holding company that controls the group and the new company Solomei AI, at a press conference in Milan.
The group is not disclosing the amount invested in this project, but it does say that it has been working on it for three years. “For three years, we have paid five people totally dedicated to this project, a group of young people, created in the summer of 2021, made up of two mathematicians, an engineer, an artist and a philosopher,” says Brunello Cucinelli, recalling that his company had already initiated this project ten years ago.
“We were approached by certain Silicon Valley players back in 2015, who wanted us to exchange views on subjects such as humanism, technology and humanist capitalism. Among them was Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, whom we met several times. We’re also in contact with Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, who took part in several meetings and symposiums that we organised at our Solomeo headquarters,” he explains, stressing the humanist values of this new project, which he believes “has had a big impact on the company’s employees and collaborators, who were initially very wary of AI.”
The site opens with a home page illustrated with a drawing of the Dioscuri, symbols of protection in Greek mythology, “who supervise the interaction between Internet users and the site, ensuring that exchanges remain focused on Brunello Cucinelli and his thinking.” So, for example, the system easily tells us the age of the entrepreneur, his role, the number of employees or his turnover. But if you ask it how much it expects to sell in China in 2023, the machine kindly replies that “we are here to explore and share aspects related to our philosophy, the life of Brunello and the company. We do not deal with other types of enquiries on this site. Thank you for your understanding. Sincerely, BrunelloCucinelli.ai.”
From the home page, you can ask a question directly or scroll through the images to discover the life of the company’s founder, executive chairman and creative director, immersing yourself in this illustrated story accompanied by music, while the images gradually shrink to make way for new drawings, all in black and white.
The site can be accessed in virtually any language. The official languages are Italian, English, Chinese and Japanese, but dozens of others are available. “It’s not a chatbot,” says Francesco Bottigliero. “We’ve designed a system that understands the visitor’s intentions and adapts to them. It answers questions and then offers content, such as images and text, for visitors to browse. During tests, we noticed that a new type of interaction was being established, as if the exchange were infinite, because the site adapts directly to the user,” he notes.
The next stage involves the group’s e-commerce site. The company is planning a new e-shop based on AI. “Knowing that 60-70% of people who come to buy in shop show up with an image retrieved from the web, AI should help us in this area by giving us a big advantage in sales,” concludes Brunello Cucinelli.
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