Generative AI (GenAI) is poised to significantly disrupt communication, content creation, and commerce. Glance, the company powering hundreds of millions of devices with Smart Lockscreen engine from smartphones to TVs, has launched Glance AI, its first GenAI application for AI-Commerce. It is looking to leverage this trend by integrating GenAI-powered personalization and visualization into areas such as e-commerce at scale.

The Glance AI application uses GenAI to personalize apparel according to your looks, tastes, affinities for brands and clothing style. This is a double-sided business model leveraging AI to connect brands to users in a very engaging and personalized way making it a very powerful platform. The initial demo and experience have been seamless and more so engaging as it is highly personalized and gives you instant style visualizations and inspiration. We took a sneak peek at what Glance is doing with this application, the company’s strategy, business model, go-to market strategy and more. We also had a Counterpoint Conversation with Glance founder Naveen Tewari.

The Interview

Below is our analysis on Glance’s entry into AI Commerce, building upon the company’s traction with personalized content on the Smart Lockscreen with OEMs globally powering more than 300 million smartphones and TVs.

Glance AI 1.0: Powerful Positioning, Strategy & Business Model

The initial phase of Glance AI's deployment is expected to lean into an exploratory, entertainment-oriented approach. This involves encouraging users to generate and share personalized looks on social media, aiming for viral dissemination. This strategy serves as a primary marketing mechanism for the platform's early-stage development, fostering engagement, attraction, and user adoption.

Glance AI is designed as a two-sided platform, connecting buyers and marketers with consumers. This architecture facilitates simultaneous personalization and promotion of offerings, leveraging AI to optimize both processes. This dual functionality enhances platform stickiness and enables real-time learning, marketing, and monetization. The integration of curated brand partnerships and personalized promotions across multiple screens, especially given Glance's substantial penetration in hundreds of millions of global mobile devices, underscores its significant scalability.

User Experience and Technological Integration will be the Key to Success

The success of the Glance AI platform will heavily rely on its seamless user experience (UX). This encompasses the entire process, from a highly accurate personalization AI model and comprehensive brand catalogues to virtual try-ons and streamlined checkout flows. While Glance AI is anticipated to integrate deeply within the Android ecosystem, its iOS presence will likely manifest as a standalone application, akin to existing e-commerce platforms. This positions Glance AI to potentially evolve into a more intelligent and personalized alternative to established commerce applications like Myntra, AJIO, or Zalando.

Something to Watch Out For: Scalability and Cost Management Challenges

A critical technical consideration for Glance AI is the efficient scaling of its infrastructure. Since this application is free and available across 140 countries and millions of users, the rapid generation of billions of images daily or monthly by millions of users using GenAI could lead to huge spikes in computational resources and prohibitive computational costs. To mitigate these expenses, a strategic shift towards on-device, local, or hybrid GenAI models will be essential. Alternatively, the platform must establish robust monetization streams from its inception to offset these escalating operational expenditures.

Google has also launched a new shopping experience in its AI mode for AI-powered search, try-ons and price tracking but not a full-fledged commerce platform yet. But this will be a competitive battleground for Glance as companies such as Myntra, Amazon Fashion and others come up with similar platforms.

Analyst Take

• Glance AI is a new and powerful way of user interaction leveraging GenAI, applicable to commerce across one vertical such as fashion.

• This will then be scaled to different behavior LLMs for different use cases – commerce for eyewear, shoes, grocery, location-based services, and others.

• Furthermore, the platforms business model is scalable and multi-sided, making it a win-win for everyone with revenue sharing.

• Glance will have to crack key partnerships and try deeper integration with OS, OEMs and model players.