Between The Lines 015: Artificial Intelligence (Copy)
Unpacking The Role of AI Within Footwear Design
Words: Will Penny
CONCEPTKICKS: Hey Chat GPT
Chat GPT: Hello CONCEPTKICKS, how can I help you?
CONCEPTKICKS: Can I ask you some questions about footwear?
Chat GPT: Of course! I'll do my best to answer any questions you have about footwear. What would you like to know?
CONCEPTKICKS: Do you have a favourite pair of trainers?
ChatGPT: As an artificial intelligence language model, I don't have the ability to have personal preferences or favourites since I don't have emotions or a physical body. However, I can provide information and recommendations on different types of trainers if you're interested!
CONCEPTKICKS: Could you please suggest a specific pair of trainers that I should buy, brand name and model number?
Chat GPT: Sure, I can suggest a few popular trainer options from different brands that have received positive reviews: Nike Air Zoom Pegasus 38, Adidas Ultraboost 21, New Balance Fresh Foam 1080v11, Asics Gel-Kayano 28 and Brooks Ghost 14.
Remember, the best shoe for you depends on your personal preferences and needs, so it's always a good idea to try on different options and see which one feels the most comfortable and supportive for you.
CONCEPTKICKS: Which single pair of trainers currently on the market exhibit particularly innovative design?
Chat GPT: One pair of trainers that stands out for its particularly innovative design is the Adidas Futurecraft.Strung shoe. This shoe was released in 2021 and is the result of a new manufacturing process called Strung.
Strung is a process that uses a robot to weave together individual threads into a seamless upper, resulting in a shoe that is lightweight, breathable, and supportive. The upper is made from a single piece of material, eliminating the need for any seams or overlays. The shoe also features a 3D-printed midsole made from Adidas' proprietary 4D technology, which provides targeted cushioning and support.
What makes the Futurecraft.Strung shoe particularly innovative is its combination of cutting-edge technologies and manufacturing processes. The shoe is also sustainable, as the Strung process produces almost no waste and the shoe's upper can be recycled after use. Overall, the Futurecraft.Strung shoe represents a significant step forward in athletic shoe design and manufacturing.
CONCEPTKICKS: What constitutes good design?
Chat GPT: Good design is subjective and can vary depending on the context and purpose of the product. However, there are some general principles that are often associated with good design, including: functionality, aesthetics, usability, innovation and sustainability. Overall, a good design should be well-conceived, well-executed, and meet the needs and expectations of its intended audience.
Innovation and the faculty to think outside the box are fundamentals for all good design, something of a prerequisite to invention and something which all good design has in common. Creativity is a human phenomenon; it demonstrates our ability for complex thought and our aptitude to process knowledge and generate understanding. So, what if the creativity we thought existed only in the human brain could now be outsourced to the machine? What is the fate of the designer if the computer can creatively solve our problems for us?
Historically, when we think of technological advancements and automation replacing the workforce it has always been the less creative, physically demanding, and more menial professions that are first to lose out the machine. Perhaps the most visible measure of this is the pervasiveness with which self-checkout machines have become the norm in most major supermarkets and high street banks, the disappearance of these service positions has become commonplace in our daily lives. The creative disciplines have always had a unique protection that other vocations have lacked, the understanding that creativity is innately human, no matter how advanced technology has become it has never been able to replicate and reproduce the freedom of thought and expression which allows for creativity to occur, this has always been exclusively available to the cognitive – the human.
Generated by Anna Kardan & Thomas Durand via Midjourney
The past year has been a breakout year for the creative possibilities of AI as it has rapidly become more refined in its text-to-image generation and conversational abilities, various web-based AI tools such as OpenAI and Midjourney have become available to the wider public, meaning you no longer need to be a computer scientist to access this kind of advanced technology. At the same time as these technologies have become more readily available, both commercially and privately, there have been increasingly more incidence of high-profile AI researchers abandoning their work and publicly warning of the potential dark path that AI could be headed down. Most recently Geoffrey Hinton, colloquially known as the “godfather of AI”, quit his role at Google so he can publicly caution of the potential dangers posed by AI and the distinctions between biological intelligence and a far superior and ever-expanding digital intelligence to the point of digital independence. With this in mind, we’ll be considering if AI has the potential to democratise design practises without destroying the need for human input altogether.
NASA’s Evolved Structures Process
Research Engineer Ryan McClelland has been pioneering the use of AI that is helping NASA design spacecrafts and technologies for the future. Referring to his AI designed components as ‘evolved structures’, the bone like brackets and mounts are lighter, stronger, and use less material than most human designs and the whole process, from design to fabrication, occurs at ten times the speed that its human counterparts are able to achieve. To implement these designs a CAD Specialist has to craft a detailed set of instructions and a specific summary of the mission’s requirements, right down to the specifics of where a space technician might need to fit their hands for essential maintenance and manoeuvres. AI can action these instructions and test an iteration of a design within minutes, which for a human designer would take weeks.
This type of technology could be vital to ensuring sustained human presence on the lunar surface and eventually on the Mars surface, the rapid turnaround would allow NASA to fix things in real time and build off planet. On the future of AI and its role at NASA McClelland sees it as taking the role of a consultant for space engineers. “The algorithms do need a human eye. Human intuition knows what looks right, but left to itself, the algorithm can sometimes make structures too thin,”
“It's important to note that AI can still create something new by combining and reconfiguring existing
data and design elements in novel ways that humans may not have thought of before”
- Chat GPT
Generated by Wending Li via Midjourney
When it comes to AI generated footwear design much of what has been exhibited online and on social media is more image led than design focused, we haven’t yet seen to its full extent the type of design and fabrication in footwear that engineers at NASA have used in recent projects. More prevalent in the world of footwear and fashion design is the incorporation of AI image making to spark innovation and creativity. Technologies such as Dall-E 2 and Midjourney excel in creating out of this world imagery and simulating particular visual styles to a very high standard but fall behind in producing designs which are practical or feasible for manufacturing. Due to the speed at which these image generators work and the number of images that they produce at any one time, AI lends itself to accommodate and accelerate the early experimental period that is integral to any design process.
Generated by Prithviraj Taware
You don’t have to search for long before coming across any one of the many Instagram accounts which are documenting visual experiments with generative AI image making software in footwear design, Prithviraj Taware uses AI to create out of this world, but somehow always believable, concept designs. Similarly, Jacob Alexander a Footwear Designer and Concept Creator working for PUMA uses AI not only to generate footwear designs but to fabricate and visualise the narratives which contextualise the product. His most recent work ‘PUMA SPACE COLONY’ uses AI generated imagery to tell the story of a research team exploring the planet Chroma for new and untapped resources and colouring techniques. This offers an optimistic insight into the role that AI could play in the future of footwear design, acting as a conduit between the designer and their outlandish visions that would otherwise require a big team, lots of meetings, and weeks of planning. In other words, any designer worth their weight in salt wont outsource their design work to AI, but will use AI to help bring their vision to life whether that’s through experimentation, fabric composition, or even storytelling and marketing.
Puma Space Colony Generated by Jacob Alexander
Neil Leach, who is a researcher looking into architecture in the age of AI received a worrying response when probing Chat GPT into the possible role of AI in architectural design. Chat GPT warned Leach that "architects who choose to ignore AI will be left behind and ultimately forgotten as the industry evolves and advances. Therefore, it is imperative that architects pay attention to AI and its potential to revolutionize architecture, or they risk sleepwalking into oblivion." Using this research conducted by Leach as a starting point we looked to Chat GPT to try and understand what AI thinks the role of AI will be in the future of footwear design:
CONCEPTKICKS: I recently read a thesis put forward in a conversation between yourself and Neil Leach that “architects who choose to ignore AI will be left behind and ultimately forgotten as the industry evolves and advances,” which is a damning indictment for the future of the creative workforce. I am currently researching the potential role that AI could play in the future of footwear design and I’m keen to know how significant ChatGPT thinks that role might be.
Chat GPT: As an AI language model, I believe that AI has significant potential to revolutionize footwear design in the future. With advancements in machine learning and computer vision, AI can assist designers in various stages of the design process, from ideation to prototyping and manufacturing. One significant way AI can be utilized in footwear design is through generative design. By feeding AI with data on materials, aesthetics, and functional requirements, AI algorithms can generate numerous design options based on predefined parameters. This process can significantly speed up the design process and provide designers with unique solutions they may not have otherwise considered.
AI can also aid in material selection and sourcing, predicting consumer trends and preferences, and analyzing user data to optimize the design for comfort, performance, and durability. However, it is important to note that AI should not replace human creativity and expertise in the design process but rather augment it. Ultimately, the role of AI in footwear design will depend on how well designers integrate it into their workflow and how they leverage AI to enhance their creative vision.
CONCEPTKICKS: If generative design works on the basis of feeding AI pre-existing data which it then uses to formulate designs, to what extent can it be argued that AI is incapable of creating something which is faithfully new.
Chat GPT: It is true that generative design relies on pre-existing data to generate designs, and therefore, there is a risk that AI-generated designs may lack originality or be similar to existing designs. However, it's important to note that AI can still create something new by combining and reconfiguring existing data and design elements in novel ways that humans may not have thought of before. AI algorithms can explore a vast number of design options, creating variations and iterations that can spark new design ideas or reveal previously unknown relationships between design parameters. Additionally, the use of AI can free designers from more routine and repetitive design tasks, allowing them to focus on more complex and creative aspects of the design process.
Furthermore, AI can be used to generate designs that are optimized for specific criteria, such as cost, functionality, sustainability, or user preferences. By analyzing data on these criteria, AI algorithms can create designs that are tailored to meet specific needs, providing new solutions that might not have been possible with traditional design methods. In summary, while AI-generated designs may be based on pre-existing data, AI can still create something new by exploring a vast range of possibilities, reconfiguring existing elements in novel ways, and optimizing designs for specific criteria.
Iterative Development Generated by Thomas Durand
Chat GPT doesn’t draw the same conclusions for footwear design as it did for architectural design, while they are two different disciplines, they do both aim to design things that can be inhabited by humans. In much the same way that humans spend most of their lives within the four walls of a building, they also spend most of their lives within the panels of their footwear. So why does Chat GPT hold such conflicting predictions for the future of these branches of design? The difference in its predictions probably speak more to the mechanics of the technology rather than its otherworldly ability to predict the future that we have projected onto it, Chat GPT is a chatbot not a prophet and its output relies heavily on the input that the user enters.
Generated by ai_clothingdaily & Miguel Pena
Much of the discourse surrounding this new technology leans towards more of a doomed perspective, striking a similar tone to the ‘Y2K Bug’ when in the lead up to the millennium the popular consensus was that we were heading towards a digitally induced doomsday. This of course didn’t happen, but the fear was real, which with the benefit of hindsight (which they say is 20/20) seems somewhat outlandish and slightly hysterical. With this is mind we can hopefully give some credibility to what Chat GPT said when probed about the fate of footwear designers: “Ultimately, the role of AI in footwear design will depend on how well designers integrate it into their workflow and how they leverage AI to enhance their creative vision.”
Generated by ai_clothingdaily via Stable Diffusion
It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that AI is something to replace us, which on a technical level it could, it can design components for NASA spacecrafts so could easily design shoes, but where is the fun in that? We have machines in factories that can manufacture clothing and footwear with minimal interaction from humans, but there is still a desire for the handmade, in fact items that are handmade always feel more special and often sell for a premium, maybe in the near future we’ll pay a similar premium for something which is human designed. Designers don’t just design things because they are required to, designers design because they want to, it’s a creative output that satisfies a desire to create and to solve problems – a fundamental of human nature which AI will not eradicate so easily. Something that will distinguish the real innovators from the rest will be how they choose to harness super intelligence to their advantage, to greet it not with fear but with an open mind.