Daily Links

1. Luxury Sector Cut at Barclays, Deutsche Bank on China Woes. Luxury-goods companies face the risk of disappointing sales growth in China that will weigh further on their stock prices, Barclays Plc and Deutsche Bank AG said, cutting their ratings on the industry. – Read More on Bloomberg

2. Is That a Model or AI? Its hyper-realistic models don’t by default indicate that they’re AI-generated. “The responsibility to disclose that the models are AI-generated lies with the company or user.” – Read More on the WSJ

3. After a century of marrying risky artistry with commercial savvy, the fashion industry has all but abandoned design talent. European brands — even houses with a long history of producing high fashion — started to conceptualize fashion as luxury. Luxury means status and money — that $5,000 handbag with a telling logo. – Read More on The Cut

4. Four Asian nations to lose $65bn this decade as heat and flooding shock clothing industry. Brands, investors and regulators are not prioritizing in planning for climate risks in the countries that collectively represent 18 percent of global apparel export due to the industry’s focus on mitigation rather than adaptation measures. – Read More on the Independent

5. AI Regulation Takes Baby Steps on Capitol Hill. The much-hyped forum on artificial intelligence, which was closed to the press and the public, was meant to set the tone for collaboration between the world’s biggest tech companies and Congress as it seeks to pass bipartisan AI legislation within the next year. – Read More on Time

6. American Eagle sues Westfield over San Francisco mall conditions. American Eagle filed a lawsuit against shopping mall owner Westfield, accusing the company of allowing its San Francisco Centre mall to “deteriorate into disarray.” – Read More on CNN

1. U.S. v. Google: What to Know About the Biggest Antitrust Trial in 20 Years. The Justice Department’s case is aimed at Google search, and whether the company has used illegal agreements to sideline its rivals and harmed consumers and advertisers in the process. Google pays billions of dollars to Apple, for example, to be the default search engine on the Safari browser. – Read More on the WSJ

2. How Tony’s Chocolonely Created a Purpose-Driven (and Profitable) Supply Chain. The first step in shifting the paradigm, therefore, is to invest time in getting to know all actors in the end-to-end supply chain, from market proposition to sourcing raw materials. – Read More on HBR

3. $90 Barbie dress helps drives Zara growth in the inflation-hit fashion industry. The retailer is also trying to entice more aspirational shoppers with deeper pockets. For example, last week it launched a collection with celebrated fashion photographer Steven Meisel, with a campaign featuring supermodels. – Read More on Fortune

4. RETRO READ: The Evolution of Zara: How the Copycat Became a Bona Fide Fashion Destination. Zara – which boasts more sophisticated designs and quality of goods, as well as a more successful supply chain than its closest rivals, sticks out as the brand that is most prominently pioneering the move towards emulating the brands it copies. – Read More on TFL

5. Ripple says it will fight the SEC lawsuit “all the way through.” Ripple is among crypto companies such as Binance and Coinbase which are being sued by the SEC for violating laws. – Read More on CNBC

1. TikTok Popularizes Products. Can It Sell Them, Too? TikTok has cemented itself as an essential advertising venue for brands aiming to reach its young users. Now it is beginning to introduce TikTok Shop to all of the app’s users in the U.S., hoping to add a major new revenue stream. – Read More on the New York Times

2. RELATED READ: As TikTok Prepares for U.S. E-Commerce, Could it Be Looking to Luxury Resale? A number of signs suggest that TikTok might make a fully-fledged luxury resale play as part of its impending stateside e-commerce push. – Read More on TFL

3. eBay Launches Luxury Consignment. eBay has introduced a new consignment service, giving users direct access to expert sellers who will list and sell their luxury items on their behalf. Launching initially for designer handbags, the service will expand next year to include additional luxury categories, including jewelry and watches. – Read More from eBay

4. Where Should Your Company Start with GenAI?  It can generate new prose, computer code, images, narration, music, and videos as well as ingest and summarize, critique, improve, and reformat almost any manner of document or analysis. – Read More on HBR

5. Adobe, others join voluntary US scheme to manage AI risks. The private commitments backed by the Biden administration are seen as a stopgap given that Congress has held discussions on potential AI legislation but little has been introduced and nothing significant has become law.  – Read More on Reuters

1. TikTok is wading into South-East Asia’s e-commerce wars. TikTok, which in 2020 moved its global headquarters to Singapore, is eyeing South-East Asia’s nearly 700m consumers to bolster its fortunes. – Read More on the Economist

2. Google pledges $20 million for responsible AI fund. Google says the project will “support researchers, organize convenings and foster debate on public policy solutions to encourage the responsible development of AI.” – Read More on Axios

3. RELATED READ: How Does AI Fit into Companies’ ESG Frameworks? A Look at “Ethical” AI. In the absence of explicit legal requirements, companies, like individuals, can only do their best to make themselves aware of how AI affects people and the environment and to stay abreast of public concerns and the latest research and expert ideas. – Read More on TFL

4. What to know about Congress’s inaugural AI meeting. “We’re reviewing recent regulatory proposals to get a sense of Hill priorities,” said Solaiman, adding that they’re working with folks from their machine learning and R&D teams to prepare. – Read more on MIT Tech Review

5. Surging e-commerce imports threaten Japan’s retail sector. “Ordinary consumers have become more familiar with overseas products,” said Kazuyoshi Nakazato, CEO of Zig-Zag, a provider of cross-border e-commerce support. “Imports of inexpensive items will grow in the future.” – Read More on Nikkei

6. Why luxury brands are courting gamers. The global gaming market is forecast to generate revenue of up to $188 billion in 2023, with one in two Gen Z consumers spending money on video games.  – Read More on Jing

1. Mass recycling of fabrics is how fashion cleans up its act. Central to this will be the so-called trigger technologies, such as QR codes on garments leading to digital product passports, a tool for collecting and sharing data throughout a product’s entire lifecycle. – Read More on the FT

2. Amazon loses bid to dismiss consumers’ price-fixing lawsuit. Amazon.com must face a prospective consumer class action in Seattle federal court accusing the online retail giant of a price-fixing scheme that has artificially inflated prices for numerous goods on its platform, a judge ruled. – Read More on Reuters

3. New AI products focus legal minds on privacy — and costs. All the new tools promise to tackle some of lawyers’ most laborious tasks with greater ease and speed. Their time-saving potential has raised expectations that they will transform — and also, perhaps, take away — much of lawyers’ day-to-day work. – Read More on the FT

4. Italy Defined Fashion. Then It Got Old. The smaller scale of Italian brands makes them easy targets. Swiss conglomerate Richemont, which owns Cartier, recently snapped up Gianvito Rossi. This summer Kering, the French group that has long owned Gucci, bought a 30% stake in Valentino with an option to buy the entire brand in the next five years. – Read More on the WSJ

5. Why Are Billions Of Clothes Never Even Sold? The main reason for this is fashion’s business model, which relies on buyers predicting the amount of product that they will sell ahead of time. Naturally, there will be leftover stock because of this – a problem that’s exacerbated by the potential financial losses involved in not having enough of the right garment. – Read More on Vogue

6. Mattel to Reap About $125 Million in Revenue From ‘Barbie’ Film. Kreiz has been reinventing Mattel as CEO over the past five years to focus on leveraging and monetizing its IP, a push that culminated with Barbie. But film “is not on its own. It is part of a holistic, multi-year strategy, to capture value from our intellectual property.” – Read More on Deadline