ASOS extends AI deal with Microsoft to support staff, customers

ASOS has signed a new three-year deal with Microsoft to extend its use of AI for customer experiences and internal operations.

The aim is to free up time to allow staff to focus on higher value work, save time through automation, and use AI assistants to present themes, sentiments, suggestions, and recommendations.

"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,” said Victoria Arden, director of technology operations for ASOS.

"Under this new agreement, we’re helping ASOSers safely experiment with generative AI tools that can remove ‘busy work’ from their day, freeing them up to unlock greater creativity and insights and focus on delighting our customers."

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ASOS has been using Microsoft Copilot, including Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Copilot for GitHub, since early 2023, to support its engineering teams to produce code effectively and efficiently.

Its HR team has also used Copilot for 365 to analyze responses to its annual employee engagement survey, creating a summary of common themes and trends.

And one of the company's Trade teams is running proof of concepts using Microsoft Copilot in Power BI to unlock greater insights across large data sets.

This is also now being piloted to support the summarization of performance week on week.

ASOS and Microsoft have deep ties

In 2022, ASOS signed a five-year agreement to continue using Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform, deploying it to power its digital platforms and support its focus on data-driven decision-making, speed, and efficiency. 

Similarly, earlier this year the online retailer launched customer testing for its AI Stylist - an Azure OpenAI-powered tool that helps customers discover new looks through a conversational interface - built using early access to Microsoft’s generative AI tools.

The company said it now plans to broaden the rollout of some of its existing tools.

"AI and machine learning are already transforming how we work at ASOS, whether it’s supporting better demand forecasting, helping with data-driven decision-making, or powering our recommendation system – delivering billions of product recommendations to our customers per day," said Papinder Dosanjh, the company's director of AI and machine learning.

"Working with Microsoft, we continue to drive innovation in this area, always aligned to our principles of safe and responsible experimentation and development."