Thanks to artificial intelligence, it is now possible to recognize a luxury bag from a fake

How do you know if a luxury item sold online is genuine? A question we’re asking ourselves more and more with the rise of social media and second-hand e-shops. American startup Entrupy, founded by Vidyuth Srinivasan in New York in 2012, responds to this with a service using artificial intelligence. This allows you to identify a variety of fashion accessories, including luxury handbags and sneakers. In October 2023, he became an official reviewer for the e-store of the social network TikTok. The Chinese platform is still in the testing phase with this service, but according to Dao Insights, users who want to sell luxury bags on TikTok will soon be required to submit an Entrupy certificate.

But then how does Entrupy work? Interested persons register online. To access the app, they must have a valid commercial license and have a working website and/or verified social media channels. The American company thus targets official resellers, pawnshops and businesses. It offers several types of subscription: monthly (prices vary from 110 euros for five authentications to 650 euros for forty authentications) and yearly (prices vary from 1170 euros for sixty authentications to 7000 euros for four hundred and eighty authentications). If the bag is evaluated as authentic, it receives an official certificate.

Once the registration is validated, members receive a package that closely resembles the phone they rented from Entrupy during their subscription. It consists of two parts: an iPod Touch and a microscope that attaches to a camera. The user opens the Entrupy app, which is already installed on the device, and selects the luxury bag brand they want to validate. The startup offers twenty-two, including Chanel, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Celine, Saint Laurent, Dior, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Valentino, Goyard , Gucci and Loewe. Then he chooses the material of the bag and follows the instructions of the machine. He will be asked to photograph the label, seams, zippers and other elements with the lens of the iPod. Then capture the texture details with the provided microscope, which can magnify the image up to 260x.

Results in five minutes

After this process is completed, the user validates the images, and in a few minutes (between three and five minutes according to the website), the application gives the result. Entrupy never explicitly confirms that a bag is fake, however, by default, if it is not verified as genuine, the bag may be considered fake. Fast results claimed by the company, which claims an accuracy rate of 99.1% thanks to technology developed by its creator.

AI vs. counterfeiting

The system is based on a comparison process. When an item is scanned through the app, machine learning algorithms compare the images to a database containing millions of records, an inventory of products known to be genuine and fake. After the result, the tested product in turn enters the database, feeding it a little more each time. Entrupy provides a financial guarantee to protect the certificate holder from financial losses caused by incorrect results. A way to protect both buyers and resellers who sometimes struggle to separate the real from the fake. What remains unknown is the availability of the service to everyone, today limited to a specific audience.