PARIS — Luxury brands may be accelerating their adoption of AI, but customers are way ahead.
That is the key finding of a new study titled “Winning Over the Customer in the Age of AI: A New Horizon for Luxury,” that found a widening gap between what the industry is building and how consumers are already behaving.
The report, conducted by Bain & Co. for France’s Comité Colbert luxury association, said AI is already reshaping how luxury customers discover brands, do research and decide on purchases, well before most brands are ready to engage.
“The clients have moved faster than the maisons,” said Joelle de Montgolfier, executive vice president, global retail and luxury at Bain & Co.
The organizations studied luxury consumers in China, France and the U.S., in April and found that 64 percent of Chinese, 54 percent of U.S.-based and 27 percent of French luxury consumers said they used AI tools to facilitate their most recent luxury purchase within the last three months.
It also noted that usage is highest among top spenders, not entry-level or aspirational consumers. Eighty-two percent of very heavy spenders used AI, while 67 percent of heavy spenders, 51 percent of moderate spenders and only 28 percent of light spenders said they used AI for luxury purchases within the first three months of 2026.
Consumers said they are embracing this shift. According to the study, 97 percent of respondents said they plan to use AI tools again for future purchases.
The most cited benefit, from roughly seven in 10 respondents, is that it “helps me decide faster and more objectively.” Others highlighted discovering options they would not have considered and gaining reassurance on quality, sizing and craftsmanship.
According to Bain’s data, the luxury sector has lost roughly 70 million active customers since the post-pandemic shopping boom of 2022, even as the global pool of affluent consumers continues to expand.
“The addressable base is growing, but the active base is shrinking,” said de Montgolfier.
The tech has moved out of the experimental phase and is now a key part of the discovery journey and embedded in the earliest stages of a luxury purchase.
However, these tools are not being used to search for specific products. They are being used much earlier and used for exploration and inspiration.
Consumers are turning to AI tools “without a preconceived brand in mind,” said Bain & Co. senior partner for retail, fashion and luxury Nathalie Remy. Instead, they are using them as stylists, and comparison tools.
“They are ready to let AI play its role of adviser — whether for stylistic opinions, inspiration, or simply narrowing down what they didn’t even know they were looking for,” she said. That means the conversational AI engines help shape a buyer’s intent and desires, with discovery starting inside the LLM systems that curate a shortlist of items and criteria before a maison is ever considered.
That change is fundamental for luxury, as consumers increasingly begin with open-ended prompts and not brand names, by asking for gift ideas, styling guidance or product suggestions within a specific budget and letting LLMs determine what is on their list.
“Seventy percent of AI prompts don’t mention a brand at all. The engines are choosing which brands consumers discover,” said de Montgolfier. That shift, she said, represents a fundamental change in how luxury brands earn visibility, moving power away from paid search and toward AI-generated recommendations.
“The battle being fought today is GEO,” said Remy, of generative engine optimization. “That’s where brands will win or lose visibility with the next generation of luxury consumers.”
Traditional names may no longer have the same advantages.
“Being big, being powerful, being rich is no longer enough to emerge in AI search,” Remy said. “Some of the largest luxury houses are under-indexed in AI responses, while much smaller specialist brands are outperforming their weight.”
In categories such as watches and skin care, specialist brands are frequently referenced more than diversified luxury groups despite having a fraction of their sales, she said. “A handful of strong customer reviews can suddenly give a small luxury brand exposure that money couldn’t buy before.”
That is largely because AI models are drawing from a very different information ecosystem than conventional search engines, with 90 percent looking at “offsite” information.
“It’s not your brand website. It’s editorial coverage, customer reviews, blogs, and everything people say about you elsewhere,” said de Montgolfier. Earned media, third-party editorial, resale platforms, consumer reviews, and other external signals are once again emerging as being more influential than how many luxury marketers have operated in recent years.
Remy argued that this also demands a different mindset from an industry long accustomed to controlling its narrative. “Luxury has always been an industry that pushes stories out,” she said. “Now brands have to listen to what consumers are actually asking AI, because prompts contain context, not just keywords.”
Unlike traditional search, where optimization revolved around individual terms, AI queries often resemble conversations, capturing motivations, occasions, budgets, style preferences, and concerns in a single request. The platforms’ ecosystems capture that information, though brands have an opportunity to create their own chats to regain insight into customer intent.
The report also highlighted luxury’s culture of perfection, in comparison with the Wild West state of AI’s adoption speed.
“By the time we’ve developed a tool, secured legal approval, image approval, and every internal signoff, the technology has already moved on,” Remy said, describing a challenge echoed by many of the luxury executives surveyed.
Rather than pursuing endless pilots, she argued, brands should focus on launching a smaller number of meaningful AI initiatives, measuring their impact, and iterating as the technology evolves.
That acceleration, however, should not come at the expense of brand identity.
“AI can augment luxury, but it cannot replace what makes a luxury house unique,” Remy said. “The brands that succeed will be the ones that remain true to their DNA while embracing new technology.”
The report also cautions that with the constantly evolving pace of AI absorbing new information, brands can no longer rely on static — if beautiful — websites, but need to feed it a constant stream of new editorial, reviews, and feedback from an engaged community to remain visible in GEO search.
“Google had no expiration date. Large language models do,” Remy said. “If you stop publishing fresh content, you disappear much faster.”
De Montgolfier drove home the point that luxury maisons must adapt. “If you’re not visible in AI recommendations, you risk disappearing from consumers’ consideration set altogether,” she said.
