The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York has joined forces with technology giant IBM in a move aimed at accelerating the development of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the fashion industry.
As part of the partnership, FIT’s FIT/Infor Design and Technology Lab (DTech Lab) will leverage IBM’s artificial intelligence (AI) for fashion capabilities – a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) developed and trained for the fashion industry.
These APIs can be delivered individually, incorporated into existing applications, and/or be leveraged to develop new retail applications, such as trend identification or analysis, product design, development, and merchandising.
FIT’s initial experience with IBM AI for Fashion was in 2018 when Tommy Hilfiger teamed with IBM and the DTech Lab on ‘Reimagine Retail,’ a project to show how AI can give a fashion brand a competitive edge with market insights, product design, personalisation and supply chain optimisation.
“Reimagine Retail was a powerful example of what happens when fashion partners with a global tech leader to advance challenging innovations,” says Michael Ferraro, director of the FIT/Infor DTech Lab. “Embedding emerging technology into our lab where faculty and students are solving industry problems is the next step in our evolving relationship with IBM. We’re leveraging the fresh perspectives and new ideas of talented creative students in an agile research environment.”
In the DTech Lab – an innovation centre that partners with industry to engage in innovative research that drives changes in industry – FIT students from fashion design, textile development and marketing, international trade and marketing for the fashion industries, and fashion business management will work directly with the APIs, developing new use cases and providing input on end-user functionality and experience.
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By GlobalDataIBM and FIT will work together to help leading fashion companies develop solutions to address challenges in product design and development, merchandising, planning and allocation, and customer sales and service.
Because the DTech Lab can help to “de-risk” innovation for large brands by testing in a safe environment, it helps enable companies to explore new emerging areas that they’d like to develop into and gain direct experience. Working with IBM’s AI and related tools and technologies provides opportunities to explore projects that address specific brand challenges in customer experience and engagement, supply chain, and/or enterprise operations, FIT says.
“FIT is an educational force that continues to innovate and ensure the future of the creative industries, including fashion,” explains Dr Joyce Brown, president of FIT. “Together we can look forward to many breakthroughs in resolving the challenges of today and tomorrow.”
Since its inception in the summer of 2017 through the current spring 2019 semester, the DTech Lab has taken on 19 projects involving 76 students and 21 faculty.
