Why LVMH Gave Awards to Three AI Startups

Among transactions that take place in offline stores, 80 percent occur after the customer has already passed through an online touchpoint before entering the store. Bluefish, a U.S. company selected by LVMH as the “Most Promising Startup” at the VivaTech Innovation Awards, made this figure the starting point for its business. Founded in 2024, Bluefish focuses on GEO, or generative engine optimization, which measures how often and in what ways brands are mentioned in answers from generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

If traditional search engine optimization aimed to appear at the top of Google search results, GEO is about managing the ranking and context in which a brand appears in the questions consumers ask AI. Bluefish quantifies these exposure rankings and suggests directions for improvement by brand. In his opening speech for the 10th anniversary of VivaTech, LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault said AI is a practical tool for reducing bureaucratic procedures within organizations.

As consumers’ brand discovery paths move from search boxes to AI chat windows, what brands need to manage is also expanding from webpage rankings to visibility within generative AI answers.

Source · WWD, "LVMH Innovation Awards Highlight AI, Traceability and Training Tools"

In the “Best Business” category at this year’s VivaTech Innovation Awards, LVMH selected Synthesia, an AI platform that creates videos without cameras or actors. Synthesia is used to produce employee training content in multiple languages and can also create videos introducing new products or collections faster than conventional filming methods.

LVMH maintains a principle that this technology is not used in areas directly seen by customers. The group’s policy is to keep a human touch in content production aimed at consumers and to limit the use of generative AI tools to internal production processes. The approach is to preserve the individuality of each maison so the group’s overall identity is not diluted, while introducing AI into common, repetitive production tasks.

LVMH said it is continuing partnerships with Google Cloud, Alibaba, and Salesforce, while also preparing to collaborate with Anthropic. Its selection of Synthesia as “Best Business” was also a decision made within this broader direction.

Source · WWD, "LVMH Innovation Awards Highlight AI, Traceability and Training Tools"

RealDrop’s Clip is a feature that applies effects and prompts to a product shot or lookbook image that has already been photographed, turning a single still image into a short video. Shopping mall detail-shot managers who have new product photos but no separate videos for Reels or TikTok, or solo sellers who handle content on their own, turn on this feature in situations like this.

Because multiple presentation versions can be created side by side from a single still image, it reduces the process of arranging a new shoot for each version or going back and forth to review separate results. The key is that instead of shooting a new video, it uses the composition and product information already contained in the existing photo.

This screen is the setup stage right before turning a single photo into a video, where you choose the effect and generation model. Because you can create different versions of the same image side by side in the empty slots that continue across the row, the process of setting up a new shoot for each version or opening each result separately is reduced into a single screen.

RealDrop’s Clip enables brands that already have product shots and lookbook images to expand their pool of video assets for Reels and TikTok without scheduling a new shoot. It is an especially suitable approach for small sellers with limited production budgets or brands that need to test multiple versions of ad creative each season. A good place to start is by uploading one existing product shot to Clip and creating several versions side by side while changing the effects and prompts.