Opening
Prapanjj S K Kota, founder and CEO of India-based Réia Diamonds, built an AI-powered "pick your vibe" interface using Anthropic's Claude in just ten minutes to help a couple decide on an engagement ring design. The interface now allows customers to choose between styles like "heritage-inspired," "bold cuts," and "modern classics" instead of scrolling through hundreds of designs, reducing what previously took days into a streamlined selection process.
AI adoption across the jewelry industry in India and Southeast Asia is accelerating rapidly. According to Diatech AI's survey of 83 jewelry manufacturers in Mumbai's SEEPZ Special Economic Zone, nearly 68% of Indian manufacturers are already using AI to create designs and manage inventory. In Southeast Asia, Karl Chan, founder of Sourcy AI, estimates that close to 80% of brands are using AI for at least some part of their workflow.
The AI Gold Rush
For over a decade, jewelry companies used AI in the background for pricing, inventory forecasting, and factory workflows. The shift to generative AI has fundamentally changed product development. Designers can now upload hand sketches, reference images, or photographs of architecture to instantly generate jewelry concepts.
Vinit Jogani, director at Diatech AI, explains the difference: "Earlier, AI worked mostly with structured data like spreadsheets and inventory systems. What generative AI does is work with unstructured data like sketches, images, and videos."
Manufacturers are also unlocking years of archived design data. Réia Diamonds connected its existing database of rings to Claude through an API, allowing customers to sort through old designs using prompts like "heritage-inspired" or "modern classics."
Productivity Gains
Nitesh Jain, co-founder of Indian lab-grown diamond jewelry brand Ethera, says AI can improve a designer's productivity by 2x to 3x. "If you earlier had five designers creating 150 designs a month, now those same five people can create 500 designs," he explains.
For Philippines-based jewelry brand Miruu, AI has reduced the time needed to create marketing videos from days to 90 minutes. Owner Kester Go notes that the brand has not reduced headcount; instead, its marketing team now produces more content without additional hires.
Karl Chan of Sourcy AI reports that collection launch timelines, which once took nearly six months, can now be compressed into just three to four weeks with AI-assisted workflows.
Marketing and Consumer Trends
Brands previously had to physically manufacture jewelry before creating campaign visuals or conducting product shoots. Now, AI can generate photos and videos directly from a design image, allowing brands to market products before they are manufactured.
Direct-to-consumer brands are using AI to analyze millions of product reviews, social media comments, and ecommerce listings to identify emerging preferences. AI systems can detect what customers like or dislike about products sold by global brands and feed those insights into future product development.
The Localized Touch
AI can also localize preferences across geographies. In India, where jewelry preferences vary sharply across communities and regions, popular bridal jewelry in South India differs significantly from styles favored in North India. Karl Chan calls this "hyper-localization," a process where highly targeted collections are created for smaller demographic groups.
Global retail trends support this approach. McKinsey estimates that AI-driven personalization can increase revenue by 5% to 15%.
Human Expertise Remains Essential
Despite operational gains, Prapanjj S K Kota of Réia Diamonds remains skeptical about using AI to create original jewelry designs. "AI gives visually impressive outputs," he says. "But it still doesn't understand what will actually sell."
Jewelry design is constrained by engineering realities. Even a 1-millimeter variation in width can change the amount of gold used, the weight of a piece, and its final price. The texture, polish, and feel of metal remain difficult for AI to understand. Karl Chan of Sourcy AI notes: "AI can see, but it cannot touch."
The Originality Question
As AI-designed jewelry becomes more mass-produced, questions around originality persist. The jewelry industry has historically operated in a gray zone between inspiration and imitation, and AI complicates this further with models trained on massive datasets containing existing designs.
Some founders appear relatively unconcerned. Kota of Réia Diamonds calls fears around design protection "overrated," arguing that copying has always been done in the industry with or without AI. "Designs move in six months," he says, adding that once collections are displayed online, replication becomes almost impossible to prevent.
Saransh Kothari, co-founder and CEO of jewelry brand Prismara from India, shares a similar view, noting that design alone cannot remain a long-term competitive advantage because successful design concepts are often quickly copied by rivals.
Vinit Jogani of Diatech AI suggests AI could become part of the solution, helping identify potential plagiarism by comparing designs across marketplaces far more systematically than humans can.
Kester Go of Miruu takes a practical view: "This is a business. As long as we can control costs and the bottom line is good, that's what matters."
Industry Skepticism on Adoption Claims
Not everyone is convinced by the scale of AI adoption being claimed. Trixie Khong, founder and CEO of Singapore-based jewelry brand By Invite Only, says AI has helped reduce administrative work, "perhaps giving us one man-day a week per designer." With over 16 years in the jewelry business, she remains skeptical of broader industry estimates suggesting up to 80% adoption in Southeast Asia.
Saransh Kothari of Prismara notes that while many companies claim to be using AI, much of it is focused on smaller operational efficiencies such as inventory management and is not necessarily "moving the needle" significantly in terms of customer experience and profitability.
