The manufacturing of fake luxury goods is a gray industry that has been repeatedly banned, causing hundreds of billions of losses to genuine goods merchants and consumers every year, and causing harm to enterprises and consumers. As a global luxury giant, LVMH attaches great importance to combating counterfeit luxury goods. Entrupy, a subsidiary of LVMH, has launched an ai identification system that can identify the authenticity of luxury handbags in four seconds, in a bid to stop counterfeits entering the market.
“The day I own Louis Vuitton will be the day I make itto the top,” is a famous line from sex and the City.
When Carrie presents her assistant with a Louis Vuitton handbag, and the assistant responds with frantic gratitude and disbelief, it’s a good example of how many urban women crave luxury handbags.
Whether it’s a natural love of beauty, identity, increased consumption, vanity and ostentatious wealth, any number of reasons can be the driving force for consumers to opt for a designer bag.
With many women going crazy for luxury handbags, it is increasingly common for college students to take out loans and scrimp and save just to buy a designer bag. A few days ago, “A woman in Hangzhou earns 4,000 yuan a month and saves 20,000 to buy a bag” became a hot search on Weibo, causing heated discussion.
In this era, luxury bags have become a kind of identity label, carrying a name bag, it means confidence, satisfaction, high-end and exquisite.
Behind the big market: A carnival of high imitation
Luxury goods are a huge market in China and are on the rise. According to McKinsey’s China Luxury Report 2019, Chinese people spent 770 billion yuan on luxury goods both at home and abroad in 2018, accounting for one-third of the global total.
According to the 2018 Luxury Bag Consumer Report released by Tmall, demand for luxury bags among Chinese women has exploded, with the number of consumers increasing by nearly 50 percent year-on-year. Statistics show that in 2018, 350,000 women in China bought at least 12 bags a year on average. What’s more, the post-90s generation has overtaken the post-80s generation, consuming nearly 50 percent of the brands.
Consumers’ relentless pursuit of handbags has created a huge market for Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Gucci, but it has also led to a large number of counterfeit manufacturers.
Hermes CEO Patrick Thomas once said in an interview with French media that 80 percent of hermes online is fake. Fake handbags accounted for 1,263 of the 5,300 fakes reported by US Customs last month. While law enforcement agencies and merchants have been trying to crack down on fakes, the huge profits behind the industry have kept them banned. Data show that the profit of counterfeit luxury goods can reach as high as 650%, which eventually makes it “difficult to remove the root of the grass, spring breeze blows again”.
And, fraud means of businesses also keep pace with The Times, often while the priest climbs a post, while the priest climbs a post, the feet, making fake “counters are not sure”.
The quality level of high imitation goods is divided from low to high into 1:1 copy (that is, imitation goods), original leather (customized), top quality goods and original order (also known as residual order and final order). In the early stage, these four categories are respectively called one-to-one, super A, A and B. In the later stage, the seller changed the classification name in order to reflect the quality.
High imitation manufacturers’ products are “high imitation” to distinguish between real and fake, because they also have a very “professional” imitation process. Whenever the counter launched a new bag, they will personally go to the counter to see, or buy back the real product, according to its leather, lining leather, hardware, size and so on to hit the version, and then continue to improve the details and optimization, the final mass production.
These fakes are flooding the online market and the second-hand market, causing great trouble to both merchants and consumers.
In response, LVMH (LVMH), the world’s largest luxury goods group, has already taken steps to use artificial intelligence to combat counterfeit luxury handbags.
Fake bag identification company, focus on fighting fake for many years
As a luxury brand giant, LVMH focuses on cracking down on fakes and has a dedicated team to manage and protect the company’s intellectual property rights. In 2016, LVMH selected Entrupy, a US-BASED company, as its AI certification solution provider, specifically aimed at preventing counterfeit products from entering the market.
Entrupy is a SaaS company based on artificial intelligence technology, founded in 2012. Its backers include DG Lab Fund, deep learning pioneer and Facebook AI Research (FAIR) director Yann LeCun, among others.
The company uses computer vision algorithms and macro lenses to secure high-value barter transactions.
Since joining LVMH, Entrupy’s patented technology has been used by hundreds of secondary retailers and markets to validate handbags and purses from 15 brands, including Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Hermes.
Entrupy’s patented system uses a peripheral’s macro lens to examine the exterior, interior and hardware of a package, and then compares those images with more than 3 million images already in its database to determine whether the package is real or fake, according to the report.
This AI identification system poses a great threat to counterfeit merchants, and even the package appraisers may lose their jobs.
Four seconds to detect fake bags, accuracy of 99.1%
Entrupy mobile App currently supports the identification of handbags of 15 luxury brands in the market, including LVMH’s Celine and LV, as well as Balenciaga, Chanel, Dior, Fendi, Goyard, Gucci and Hermes, etc. With 99.1 percent accuracy, the results are released in just four seconds.
Appraisal process, however, requires the user to choose the handbag brand, style, and clearly photographed many handbag close shot pictures, in the process of its certification, system of artificial intelligence algorithm will be captured in a series of images from a bag of about 500 data points to identify, including texture, contrast, pins, Logo geometry, process etc. Characteristics.
The official inspection process is divided into five steps:
– Place the Entrupy hardware peripherals directly on the item
– Open the Entrupy application
— Take an image of the bag as prompted by the app
— AI algorithm (based on deep convolutional neural network and computer vision) to analyze image identification authenticity
– Receive the authentication result
According to Entrupy, while the most reliable method of identification is still an expert’s own inspection, human experts are prone to mistakes and the craft of faking is improving. Original designers often tweak handbag features to prevent forgery, and it’s hard for experts to keep up with the changes.
Relying on a deep database of microscopic images is therefore the only way to keep up with the latest handbag design developments.
(Paper links: http://tinyurl.com/y3ddjb28)
Regarding the source of the data set, the company said that it has been collecting different data around the world for many years and has established data partnerships with well-known companies to collect their inventory data, thus ensuring that they can pre-inspect items.
They now have a sample of data going back more than 80 years to the last few months. Through three layers of filtering (two manual and one algorithm), they corrected errors in the submitted data and ensured that the correct information was always provided to the algorithm during machine training.
Good technology: stop consumers from falling for it
At present on the market, in addition to the fake bag, other kinds of fake goods are also as much as cattle hair, make people hate.
As a result, a series of articles and platforms on how to pick a luxury bag have emerged, including xiaohongshu and Douyin, where users teach how to identify luxury goods.
The traditional authentication method is generally through the security code, LOGO, internal standard and other details, but, more and more exquisite imitation technology and the growing popularity of the second-hand market, so that the authenticity of the authentication battle is more difficult.
With the help of ARTIFICIAL intelligence, consumers will also be able to easily identify counterfeit luxury goods and merchants will be able to prevent counterfeits from entering the market at the source. So, maybe in the near future, the counterfeiters will disappear completely.
A quick note: Readers, this is a practical skill to use to help your boyfriend/girlfriend verify that a bag is real, or to forward this article to them.
That is, if you have a boyfriend/girlfriend or a bag.
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