Sophia Kianni on Fashion, Climate and Building Phia with AI

On The AI Download, Shira Lazar welcomes Sophia Kianni, climate activist, Phia co-founder and co-host of The Burnouts. They plan to discuss sustainability, fashion, entrepreneurship and the human side of AI.

Kianni traces her interest in technology to her science-and-technology high school and Stanford. She says the emergence of ChatGPT made a platform shift apparent, and she began considering how AI could support work across her projects.

At Climate Cardinals, she says a partnership with Google used translation technology to automate some of the nonprofit’s work. At Phia, she sees AI as a way to make finding the right shopping item easier. For her, technology can support social progress when used thoughtfully.

Lazar asks about tension between climate advocates and the technology industry. Kianni says AI is already a major social shift and argues that the responsibility now is to use it thoughtfully. She hopes automation can make systems more efficient and less wasteful.

Using fashion as an example, Kianni argues that excessive production, unsuitable purchases and returns create waste. She cites a large estimated carbon saving for secondhand purchases, but the interview excerpt does not establish the calculation’s boundaries. She sees easier discovery of used items as one possible improvement.

Asked about disagreement among activists, Kianni says different roles matter: some people challenge systems and force critical discussion, while others build proposed solutions. She values both approaches and wants room for different views on social progress.

On education, she hopes AI can reduce time spent on tedious tasks such as formatting citations, leaving more time for synthesis and learning. She is interested in how newer students will use such tools.

Kianni observes that online content can become similar when creators optimize for predictable patterns and algorithms. She enjoys marketing and says analysis can make some creative work more efficient, but wonders what engineered virality might mean for originality and creators over time.

Both speakers consider whether an increasingly online world makes offline connection more valuable. Kianni says she prioritizes in-person relationships and that her company works together in the office most days. She believes young people need boundaries around time online.

Kianni met Phoebe Gates when they were randomly paired as roommates. Their shared interest in fashion and an entrepreneurship class led them to explore a shopping problem together. They did not initially plan to leave school, move to New York and build a company.

A Stanford professor liked their early work and provided an initial grant, encouraging them to hire and test whether the idea could become a business. Kianni describes the gradual shift from friends solving a problem to co-founders and podcast partners.

The initial problem was familiar: a shopper might find a new dress and suspect the same item was cheaper on Poshmark, Depop or The RealReal. Searching each resale site manually was slow and often unsuccessful.

After roughly 30 to 50 user interviews, the founders built a Chrome extension to find close secondhand alternatives while a person shopped. Kianni says learning how much apparel shopping happened on mobile led them to prioritize a Safari mobile extension over desktop.

Phia added information such as estimated resale value, materials and reviews. Kianni frames the product as a shopping advisor designed to help answer “Should I buy this?” At the time of the interview, she says the company had raised $8 million; the host mentions about 700,000 users.

Kianni explains that retailer partnerships provide catalog feeds, including data from eBay. Phia compares images, descriptions and titles against indexed items to find matches. She says the company had indexed more than 300 million items and reduced matching latency from roughly eight to ten seconds to under two.

The company estimates resale value using comparable secondhand listings and uses engagement signals to improve ranking. Kianni describes AI and machine learning as components of this process, with personalization as an important goal.

Lazar asks how a small startup can defend itself if a larger company copies a feature. Kianni points to infrastructure, relationships and brand partnerships, saying Phia had more than 5,100 brand relationships at the time. She also emphasizes acquiring users efficiently and building a community.

The founders’ podcast, The Burnouts, gives them a way to share what they learn and hear from an audience that overlaps with Phia’s target users. Kianni says this feedback can inform product iteration. The figures she cites for views and reach describe the company’s position at the time of recording.

Kianni argues that founders should explain the people and motivation behind a product. She says Phia’s name combines Phoebe and Sophia and that sharing their story helps potential users understand the problem they wanted to solve. Community and distribution, in her view, can matter as technology becomes easier to reproduce.

Looking at fashion more broadly, Kianni is excited by virtual try-on tools that help people see how an item might look before buying. She also describes a Phia sizing feature that uses a shopper’s measurements and retailer data to suggest a size.

She hopes better information can reduce the friction and waste associated with returns. Lazar says she has used AI to help assemble outfits and values secondhand shopping, although she can find physical thrift stores overwhelming.

Asked where AI can help sustainability beyond marketing language, Kianni returns to inefficient systems. She sees an opportunity in supply-side forecasting and on-demand production, so brands make fewer garments that go unsold, are discounted or are discarded.

She also wants products designed to last and systems that help people track, resell or donate garments. Lazar adds that on-demand manufacturing could reduce waste, while acknowledging that AI’s own environmental costs still need attention.

Kianni says she and Gates started The Burnouts shortly before launching Phia. They wanted a space to discuss being in one’s twenties while managing careers, friendships, family and relationships. They interview entrepreneurs and other leaders about their experiences and lessons.

On burnout, Kianni shares a view that a lack of momentum can be exhausting. She says she works long hours but currently feels energized by progress and by work she loves. This is her account of her own motivation, not a general rule that passion prevents burnout.

Lazar asks how AI has helped the startup’s creativity. Kianni wants her team to learn tools that reduce time spent on editing, audio and other repetitive work, freeing attention for more demanding tasks. Her time-saving estimates are her own assessment.

Kianni describes using Adobe Firefly tools to create or animate B-roll for social clips. She says illustrative footage can be quicker to produce than finding a specific existing clip, and that changing visuals has helped retain viewers in their short-form content.

Asked where she draws the line on automation, Kianni returns to the parts of work that give her joy. She loves writing and prefers to compose many emails and personal messages herself because she wants them to retain her voice and human connection.

For tedious or repetitive tasks, she is happy to use AI. Looking ahead, she imagines describing a small software tool in a few paragraphs and having it created for a workflow, leaving people more time for harder problems.

For Phia, she imagines shopping agents that know a person’s taste and can help decide whether an item is a good fit. The goal is to reduce time spent on unsuitable purchases and possible returns while preserving the enjoyment of fashion.

Kianni says the team wants an experience that can connect a digital closet, previous purchases, styling and resale. She distinguishes enjoyable fashion discovery from more transactional purchases, and sees Phia as a consumer interface built around that richer experience.

As AI changes search and lowers the barrier to shipping software, Kianni says distribution, data and partnerships become even more important. She presents community and brand relationships as her startup’s thesis, while acknowledging that she is a first-time founder.

Asked how she looks after herself, Kianni points to colleagues, friends and family who energize her. She says making time for conversations with people she loves helps her stay motivated and grounded.

In a rapid-fire round, she names Adobe Firefly as a favorite tool and criticizes the trend of feeding private conversations to AI for psychological analysis. She warns that leading questions can bias the output, so a generated answer should not automatically be treated as evidence.

She mentions trying an email drafting tool but says she still writes much of her correspondence manually and has not fully decided whether it suits her. She describes her relationship with AI as pragmatic, optimistic and ambitious, and encourages listeners to use it to learn and save time.