ASOS pilots AI bartering chatbot Nibble

Online retail giant ASOS has introduced Nibble AI to its clearance site, asossamplesale.com, allowing customers to haggle on prices.

Nibble has so far been available purely on the retailer’s River Island stock on the sample sale site, and is among 300 brands and retailers, including beauty brand Iconic London, that are using the AI-powered chatbot.

The technology allows users to haggle back-and-forth with the bot, with the Evening Standard reporting that some users have managed to get discounts of up to 40% on ASOS purchases via the increasingly popular tech.

However, ASOS told TheIndustry.fashion that the online retailer had "no plans to introduce [Nibble] on ASOS.com", its main site.

There has been backlash on social media, with many arguing that the ability to reduce the cost of items that are already at a very low price point is compounding the issue of fast fashion.

ASOS is no stranger to tech innovations, having announced earlier this month that it had signed a new three-year agreement with Microsoft to take advantage of the computer company’s AI tools.

This included Microsoft Automate, which offers automated meeting summaries, notes, actions, and live translations through Teams Premium. The agreement also included Microsoft Copilot, including Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Copilot for GitHub, to improve coding.

At the time, Victoria Arden, Director of Technology Operations at ASOS, said: "A core part of our business strategy is driving operational excellence within ASOS: making sure we’re as fast, efficient, and effective as we can be, and investing our time and resources in the projects that matter."

Similarly, in February, ASOS launched customer testing for its AI Stylist. This aids customers in discovering new looks through a conversational interface.