OXFORDSHIRE, United Kingdom — There’s a growing sense of unease about technology, and artificial intelligence in particular. Society is overwhelmed by information and noise on social media, while AI has the appearance of a rapidly expanding bubble ready to pop.

Yet at its best, technology can also be a powerful force for bringing people together and connecting companies to their customers.

These contradictions were the subject of the third session of BoF VOICES 2025, BoF’s annual gathering for big thinkers. Entrepreneur and futurist Azeem Azhar pointed out in conversation with The Economist’s Kenneth Cukier that roughly a billion people now use tools such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. But according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, the majority of respondents in the US and UK are pessimistic about the impact AI is having on people and society.

That division is reflected in the opinions of whether the market is in the midst of an AI bubble. Nobody seems to be quite sure, including Azhar himself.

Regardless, AI continues to rapidly progress, and it will likely take years before businesses are able to harness it to its full potential. Azhar noted that when electricity became common automakers first used it to hang lights that allowed them to continue working after dark and increase their productivity. It was still a decade before Henry Ford applied electricity in the form of the assembly line and revolutionised manufacturing.

“The best companies will eventually rethink the entirety of their internal operations,” Azhar said.

How AI Is Changing Fashion

Fashion businesses are in the midst of their own search to discover how they can best use AI. The co-founders of the startup Phia, Sophia Kianni and Phoebe Gates, daughter of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, talked about their quest to modernise e-commerce, which Kianni said has hardly changed in decades.

“Consumers are used to a world where AI makes everything faster and frankly easier,” Gates said. “Speed and ease are now the expectation, and not the exception.”

Phia aims to solve the issue by using AI to make it easier for shoppers to compare costs, find alternatives to products and gauge an item’s real value, including its future resale price.

PixelModa, which handles photography ranging from e-commerce product photos to editorial shoots for hundreds of brands, has taken its own approach to AI. The company can generate imagery for clients but also uses AI-assisted photography, in which the AI guides the work of a human photographer.

“AI today works very, very well on content,” said PixelModa president Gianni Serazzi. “What we call [the] AI assistant, that’s actually where it changes the paradigm.”

Fabrizio Cardinali, chief executive of Etro, a PixelModa client, said the company has used AI photography for campaigns as well as its e-commerce business, which continues to grow quickly.

‘We didn’t do it pushing harder but working smarter,” Cardinali said, specifying that Etro has used AI for everything from planning its media investments to enhancing product descriptions and producing creative assets.

Technology’s Limits

But Serazzi acknowledged that there are limits to what AI can do on its own.

“If it’s not content that you are repeating over and over again, AI today still has huge, massive limits,” he said.

The AI-driven virality brands chase on social media, meanwhile, isn’t as valuable as it used to be, according to Gabriel Whaley, founder and CEO of MSCHF, known for its viral products and stunts. Initially, people shared content because it was so good they felt compelled to. There was an emotional element to it.

“Now we live in this world of the numbers game, which is algorithmic,” Whaley said. “Make 15-second videos. If you take enough shots on goal, you will become viral.”

We’re all now drowning in content and fighting to break through the noise, but the noise only keeps growing, with AI now contributing to the problem.

Whaley’s solution is to restore the value of information and connection by limiting, not algorithmically amplifying, their reach — secrets and small groups, in his parlance — and to emphasise craftsmanship.

Technology as Connection

Small groups are the lifeblood of the online forum Reddit, whose vice president of community, Laura Nestler, offered advice for all the brands today treating community as little more than a buzzword.

“Contrary to popular belief, communities are not everything for everyone,” she said. “They’re actually the niche for the few. This is a feature. It’s not a bug.”

Communities are built on the 1 percent of a brand’s most passionate fans, and that’s what gives them their power, she noted. They don’t just want to buy from a brand, they want to build something with it. But in order to do that, the brand must be willing to relinquish some control.

There are other ways brands can connect with their customers through technology. Digital product passports, which provide digital identities for physical products and can include information like the item’s authenticity and origins, are being adopted by brands as they ready for EU regulations set to take place in the coming years, but they also offer an opportunity for designers to speak to their customers.

“The connected product, amongst other things, is a device for storytelling,” said Michele Casucci, founder and general manager of Certilogo, which creates DPPs for brands such as Patrick McDowell.

McDowell introduced Certilogo DPPs on his Spring-Summer 2026 collection and through them offers content such as making-of videos and images for his products. They can be especially powerful for bespoke items. A video played at the start of the talk showed a dress that McDowell said had been made from four vintage wedding dresses.

“Having something inside that dress which can tell that story for the client, for their friends when they get dressed for their wedding, or for their daughter in 20 years, that’s really important,” McDowell said.

BoF VOICES 2025 is made possible in part by our partners McKinsey & Company, Amazon Fashion, Pixel Moda, Value Retail, Certilogo, Swap Commerce, Soho House, Wheely and Getty Images.