A book in progress
Artisanal Intelligence
AI deployed with restraint, judgement, and taste. For luxury leaders and the technologists who serve them.
I. The thesis
Why most AI framing is wrong for luxury
The dominant AI framing right now is mass-automation. Scale, speed, efficiency, replacement. That story works for software companies, support teams, and anyone optimising a cost function. For luxury, it's poison.
Craft, scarcity, judgement, and taste are the assets that let a heritage house charge what it charges.
A brand that trades its craft for throughput stops being the brand its clients bought into. A clienteling team that leans on AI to write outreach at volume dilutes the relationships that make the house.
There's a different framing, which this book develops: Artisanal Intelligence. AI deployed with restraint, judgement, and taste to amplify craft rather than erase it. Creative assistants that support artisans. Archive digitisation that makes heritage searchable. Demand forecasting that preserves scarcity instead of chasing volume. Clienteling tools that augment the relationship, never replace the person.
The book argues that luxury needs its own AI playbook, distinct from the software industry's.
II. Who it's for
Two readers in particular
Luxury leaders
Creative directors, brand presidents, heads of clienteling, CRM directors, and house CEOs who know their teams will use AI either way, and want to shape how rather than whether. Readers commercially aware they can't ignore AI but sceptical of the usual framing.
Technologists who serve them
In-house digital, data, and engineering leads at heritage houses, plus the consultants and agency partners who advise them. People who need to translate AI capability into something a creative director will trust.
III. What it won't be
A short list of what this book avoids
- Generic "what is AI" explainers already present in every other book.
- Vendor-agnostic hot takes. The book names specific tools and their trade-offs.
- "Transformation" rhetoric. Luxury doesn't transform. It refines.
- Blockchain, NFTs, and Aura-style consortium ledgers. The book sticks to AI and to technologies that will still matter in five years.
- Case studies the reader can already find in the trade press.
IV. Author
Why me
I'm Tamas Piros. Google Developer Expert in Web Technologies. 25+ years building software, training senior engineers, and speaking at conferences around the world. MBA.
I build with AI daily, across LLMs, agents, MCP servers, and on-device inference with Gemma. I've also spent enough time in rooms full of senior executives to know what a creative director will nod at and what will make them glaze over.
This book sits where that technical hands-on work meets the commercial and cultural reality of luxury. It's the book I couldn't find when I started looking.
V. Keep me posted
Email me and I'll let you know when the first chapter is ready, and when the book launches.
I'll also send the occasional short note on where the book's going. No frequent newsletter, no promotion for anything unrelated.