More than a third of luxury buyers now start their purchasing journey with AI, not Google.
AI systems are increasingly selecting, summarising and ranking brands before customers engage directly with them. These Gen AI recommendations are fast becoming the new front door for brands. If a brand is not included, the sale may already be lost.
Invisible by design
The rise of AI in the customer decision-making journey creates a dilemma.
Many luxury brands limit their visibility to AI by blocking crawlers from scraping their websites to prevent unauthorised misuse or distortion of their IP-protected content, image and voice, and to protect their customers. For businesses built on exclusivity, heritage and customer experience, restricting automated access has been a natural extension of how brands manage distribution, presentation and customer relationships.
However, the data collected by ‘friendly’ crawlers allows AI-powered systems to index, interpret and surface content in response to customer queries. Blocking them may reduce misuse, but it also creates a different risk: invisibility at the very moment customers are deciding what to buy.
Several recent studies demonstrate that consumers are increasingly turning to generative AI tools for recommendations and receiving curated answers rather than lists of links. Recent research suggests that 58% of consumers already use AI for product or service recommendations. In fashion, adoption is even higher.
Data from Bain’s Apparel and Accessories Shopper Pulse Survey in February highlights the scale of the shift: 53% of UK consumers always or mostly use AI when shopping for fashion. This rises to 61% in the United States. Adoption spans all generations, with Millennials leading at 51%, followed by Gen Z (42%), Gen X (36%) and Baby Boomers (32%).
Discoverability drives demand
At the same time, AI is evolving from conversational tools into agentic systems capable of acting on users’ behalf throughout the customer lifecycle, from discovery and comparison through to purchase and post-sale engagement. Traditional search behaviour is declining as AI-mediated discovery becomes more influential.
When customers ask AI tools for recommendations, only a small number of brands may be mentioned. If a brand is absent due to blocked crawlers, it may not be considered. Visibility at this stage directly influences demand and, ultimately, sales.
Blocking crawlers not only risks invisibility: it can also undermine brand control. If official content is unavailable, AI systems may rely on third-party or outdated sources, risking inaccurate brand representation. AI systems may also surface unofficial sellers, dupes or counterfeits instead of authoritative brand content.
Building a deliberate AI discoverability strategy
The solution is to implement a deliberate AI discoverability strategy.
Luxury brands should strengthen authoritative signals across the wider digital ecosystem, ensuring information is accurate and consistent across trusted sources and that heritage, craftsmanship and provenance stories are properly documented. Rather than treating crawler access as a binary decision, brands should consider more nuanced approaches that balance visibility with protection. They should also actively monitor how they appear in AI-generated outputs and address inaccuracies where possible.
Owned channels are also important. Crucially, they must be made easily AI-readable. Underpinning this is high-quality, structured online content which helps AI systems understand and reference brand information.
At the same time, luxury brands should continue investing in premium AI-enabled customer experiences. The challenge is balancing rich storytelling and immersive online experiences with machine readability, which requires greater rigidity of content and structure. A potential solution is maintaining customer-facing experiences alongside an LLM-friendly backend environment that provides authoritative content for AI systems.
When executed well, the commercial impact is tangible. AI-driven transformation has the potential to deliver meaningful improvements in both efficiency and sales, with some estimates suggesting EBITDA uplift in the range of 10% to 25%.
There is clear urgency. Customer journeys are rapidly shifting towards AI-generated recommendations and brands that fail to adapt risk losing relevance.
Five key takeaways for luxury brands
- Blocking crawlers is no longer a neutral decision. It can have direct commercial consequences in how customers discover brands.
- The customer journey is shifting away from brand websites. Decisions are increasingly influenced before a user ever visits the brand.
- Visibility now depends on machine-readable information. If systems cannot access or understand a brand’s content, they may ignore it.
- Control is no longer about exclusion alone. Providing the right crawler access to the right sources may offer better protection for brands than blocking everything.
- This is a strategic business change and not a technical upgrade. It affects brand visibility, positioning and revenue and requires board-level attention.
Rachael Barber is a leading IP specialist with a global reputation for advising luxury, fashion and retail brands. As head of luxury for Pinsent Masons, she advises premium and luxury brands on brand strategy, design rights, enforcement and IP‑rich commercial issues, with a particular focus on protecting brand value in fast‑moving and image‑driven markets. She can be reached at [email protected].
Richard Reeve‑Young is a legal director at Pinsent Masons and particularly recognised for his work with luxury, fashion and retail brands, advising on the protection, enforcement and commercialisation of valuable intellectual property assets. His work is valued for its practicality, strategic insight and deep understanding of the challenges facing premium brands in an increasingly digital marketplace. He can be reached at [email protected].
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