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6 September 2024
Can Austrian bookstore Morawa's AI chatbot Mo find interesting literature on fashion, design, tailoring? Fashion.at created a question with the help of the magazine's AI chatbot Cytara.
Morawa is Fashion.at's favorite bookstore in Vienna, not only because it was one of the first to stock the printed booklet of the study 'FashionAvigator - die interessantesten Seiten zum Thema Mode im WWW' in the mid-90s. This publication was the result of a study started in 1995 about the most interesting fashion sites at the beginning of the Internet as we know it today. However, in 1995-96, few people had the digital equipment and technological access to the World Wide Web, which was so slow that WWW was an acronym for World Wide Waiting. For many, the printed publication was the only way to get an idea of what was happening online. The reason for the research was not primarily the publication. It laid the foundation for the development of the journalistic magazine Fashion.at, which was first published in 1996 under the name giving URL.
Morawa has been at the forefront of new developments in book retailing for decades. The company currently operates 18 stores throughout the country. Fashion.at's favorite bookstore on Wollzeile is the chain's multi-story flagship store with a very well-curated selection of books, both fiction and non-fiction, in German and other languages. This week, Morawa launched the AI chatbot 'Mo' on www.morawa.at. Klaus Magele, Managing Director of Morawa Bookstore, provided insights into the creation of the chatbot in collaboration with specialists from bpm consult ag (Hägendorf, Switzerland) and QualiFiction GmbH (Hamburg, Germany), both early adopters of artificial intelligence in the book industry. (Details of the current beta version can be found at https://www.bpm.ch/ueber/blogs/detail/ChatBot/Revolutionieren-Sie-Ihre-Buchsuche-mit-unserem-neuen-ChatBot). Mo's recommendations are tailored to customers' individual reading preferences and to complement the personalized service available in Morawa's physical stores. Using semantic search, the chatbot can suggest books customized to users' specific queries. It offers explanations and reviews if available. It's announced that the tool will continuously improve with each interaction.
Fashion.at tested the AI on German keywords like 'Mode', 'Design', 'Geschichte' and 'Schneiderei' and received very interesting book recommendations. Since Fashion.at's own chatbot Cytara is currently running a quiz about hiking clothes (on fashion.at/FashionChatbot), Fashion.at tried a more refined question (translated from German) "Search for books with information on the history of hiking clothing, mountaineering equipment over time since the beginning of tourism in Austria" formulated with the help of the magazine's AI chatbot Cytara and received tips from Mo such as the Alpine Club Yearbook 'Alpenvereinsjahrbuch BERG 2025' or 'Bergsteiger. Auf den Spuren großer Alpinisten' with portraits of legendary alpinists. Fashion.at also searched outside of Mo with other AI and search engines, but the (German-language) book about hiking clothing through the centuries may not have been written yet.
Well, the chatbot is good and a great addition to the service. But Fashion.at will not be missing the opportunity to visit the store on Wollzeile in the future, to be inspired by the books on display, to relax in one of the red leather armchairs and to immerse oneself in literature on as yet unknown topics for which the keywords have to be found first.
Image: The picture, inspired by the new bookstore AI chatbot service, shows Fashion.at's AI chatbot Cytara sitting in an AI-created bookstore reading a book. Credits: The image was created with AI, Image Creator in Bing today, September 6, 2024.
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