On Day 1 of SXSW, the Fashion Innovation Alliance joined experts from L'Oréal, Heuritech and by REVEAL for a panel on AI for luxury, fashion and beauty--a topic that proved so popular SXSW had to turn people away as the room reached capacity well before the 11 A.M. panel began. The session represented the diversity of tech, fashion and beauty in terms of race, gender, geography and areas of expertise. Panelists traveled from Paris, New York, San Francisco and Washington, DC--all with varied backgrounds in the science of beauty, fashion, retail, machine learning and law. The session also included two female founders in tech--Megan Berry of by REVEAL and attorney and fashion tech strategist Kenya Wiley. The panelists' expertise and representation showed the value of diversity when developing innovative products for luxury, fashion and beauty.

Wealth and influence in the technology business have always been about gaining the upper hand in software or the machines that software ran on. Now data -- gathered in those immense pools of information that are at the heart of everything from artificial intelligence to online shopping recommendations -- is increasingly a focus of technology competition. And academics and some policy makers, especially in Europe, are considering whether big internet companies like Google and Facebook might use their data resources as a barrier to new entrants and innovation. In recent years, Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have all been targets of tax evasion, privacy or antitrust investigations. But in the coming years, who controls what data could be the next worldwide regulatory focus as governments strain to understand and sometimes rein in American tech giants.