For all its virtues and vices, AI does possess an undeniable advantage of speed over us mere mortals. While this may have complicated implications when it comes to creativity, sheer speed and computing power are always an advantage in the complex world of data and statistical analysis. For fashion business, then, AI has the potential to revolutionize our ways of working and consuming, from delivering more accurate stock and purchase predictions, to optimizing global shipping, and far beyond. The fashion industry is famously resistant to change, however, and AI can often be misjudged as a harbinger of soulless automation and eventual obsolescence. But fashion also desperately needs to clean up its act, and if AI can make that process easier, quicker and — most importantly — cheaper, then the industry can’t ignore the technology for much longer.


For Abbie Morris, the first major hurdle is cleaning up the supply chain to meet current and upcoming environmental standards. The London-based entrepreneur founded AI startup Compare Ethics with her colleague James Omisakin back in 2019, and has since steered the company through multiple high-profile collaborations with fashion brands such as New Look and Reformation. 


“I’ve always worked in climate policy. I worked at the UN and World Economic Forum, and I was always preoccupied with the same question: how do we make it easier for businesses to be responsible?,” Morris shares. But the world of policy often moves at a less-than-brisk pace, and she realized an agile startup would be able to make more of an impact on the fashion stage. “The whole reason we created the tool is because we were drowning in a sea of bad reports and data,” Morris continues. Compare Ethics was created with the sole purpose of independently verifying companies’ sustainability and supply chain claims, to ensure they are compliant with government regulations.