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MILAN — Brunello Cucinelli on Wednesday unveiled the brand’s new e-commerce platform underpinned by artificial intelligence, immediately available in Italy, the U.S. and the U.K. and to be rolled out to other markets in the coming months.
This is an evolution of the site launched in 2024 and dubbed “human artificial intelligence,” and delivered through “Callimacus” developed by Solomei AI, the small research center created at Cucinelli’s headquarters to explore the creative, scientific and technological applications of AI.
The new concept of “Callimacus” is that there are no conventional pages, through a system that understands and follows the intention of the user for a personalized experience.
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“For several years, we had been envisioning a project of this kind, arising from the combination of our desire to welcome our esteemed ‘online guests’ with the most promising technological innovations, and our own way of thinking; indeed, we firmly believe that artificial intelligence must remain profoundly human,” Cucinelli said.
He enthused about this new development, finding it “utterly fascinating. Our impression is that we have achieved a true invention.”
He touted the potential of “Callimacus,” named after the Greek scholar who Cucinelli describe as “a brilliant innovator and experimenter as a poet and, on the other, had the immensely important role of cataloguing and safeguarding the vast collection of the great Library of Alexandria.” As reported, Cucinelli’s foundation is restoring an 18th-century villa in Solomeo, near the brand’s headquarters in Italy’s Umbria region, to build a Universal Library as part of the next Project for Humanity.
Brunello Cucinelli‘s new e-commerce platform underpinned by AI.
The ideas behind the platform, he continued, “allow a measure of human intelligence to be infused into the way websites operate, creating personalized experiences that go beyond task execution to place at their heart each of us, our uniqueness, and our manner of exploring and discovering.”
Cucinelli has long been interested in technology and he reiterated that it can add “insight” and “new visions” to fashion, which is “ever in search of beauty.”
“I am fascinated by the idea that AI can nurture and enhance human intuition — the highest capacity of our mind to imagine, understand and create beyond what is already known. For this reason, I like to think of AI as a handmaid of humanity, to collaborate with in harmony, rather than as a mere automation for actions, relations, and behaviors. Our freedom to learn, choose and act — even in our digital lives — is itself a source of richness.”
He concluded with a belief that “this fascinating invention will strongly support our vision for the company’s growth, in terms of both brand image and revenue — something we’ve already seen during these early test days with our friends, who are experts in the field.”
Solomei AI operates thanks to AI-based “agents” named after Cucinelli’s beloved philosophers and mentors, including Socrates. Another agent is Demosthenes, standing for identity, “who can express himself with words and tones of voice consistent with the goal of each project in the chosen languages.”
The Dioscuri are two agents that “monitor the correctness of the conversations, protecting the dialogues between the site and the visitor.” Callimacus is the philologist, the agent that verifies, modifies, corrects and improves content through the interaction with the visitor.
Cucinelli has not only built a business selling his luxury collections to Silicon Valley leaders, but also a network of personal relationships nurtured over the course of several years, with the likes of Jeff Bezos and Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, centered around the common goal of “humanizing technology, sharing questions about eternity and leaving a mark on earth.”
It all dates back to 2016 when Benioff and Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom invited Cucinelli to a dinner in San Francisco, asking him to talk about his humanistic vision. In the two following years, Benioff asked Cucinelli to be a guest at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual tech conference in San Francisco.