Swatch’s New OpenAI-Powered Tool Lets You Design Your Own Watch
And, just like with Swatch x You, it is possible to further personalize the watch by choosing indexes or selecting the color of its mechanism. To save on data center power consumption and unbridled creativity, you’re only allowed three prompts per day on AI-DADA, something Swatch bills as a “creative challenge that makes every attempt special.”
Ultimately, what we have here is a new version of Swatch x You that has been plugged into the image generation software provided by OpenAI, allowing the general public to adorn their timepieces with whatever graphics they see fit to imagine and lay on top of. What could possibly go wrong here, I wonder?
I asked Roberto Amico, global head of digital at Swatch, what guardrails had been put in place to prevent people from making, say, their own Jeffrey Epstein Swatch, or White Power Swatch, or Stormy Daniels Swatch. Or maybe a Swatch with a Rolex logo on it, or something that looks a lot like the Rolex logo.
Amico reassures me Swatch has indeed put in place safeguards, particularly with logos for example, alongside certain restrictions already put in place by OpenAI. But interestingly, Nick Hayek Jr., CEO of the Swatch Group, tells me that he fought with OpenAI to withdraw some of its existing safeguards to make AI-DADA “more liberal, more Swatch”.
Hayek also admitted at the launch event in Switzerland that his first suggestions about AI-DADA were all about “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll”, but was told his own model wouldn’t allow it. Still, you can never underestimate the ingenuity of the general public to bypass the obvious red flags – like banning the model depicting nudity or religious iconography – and create something that Swatch might not want to be associated with. Time will tell how bulletproof this model really is.
Familiar faces
Although Swatch’s image model may be based on OpenAI, it is by default a dataset of over 40 years of Swatch watches, products, designs, artwork and street paintings. Like a pattern or color on a particular Swatch dial or bracelet from the 1980s? It’s in there. Have a penchant for a collaboration with Keith Haring, Vivienne Westwood or Phil Collins, the model has it too. If you’re asking for a design inspired by something outside of what Swatch has collected in these archives, only then, Amico tells me, does AI‑DADA go beyond the internal dataset and leverage data from OpenAI.
Courtesy of: Swatch
