“The application of imaging models like Stable Diffusion XL holds immense potential to revolutionise the design and creative space,” says Shelley Niu, a senior designer at Stability AI. “These models offer designers an invaluable toolkit to accelerate their ideation and decision-making processes and to explore uncharted territories of creativity. You can liken it to having a 24/7 idea generator by your side, or getting a burst of inspiration from the future.
Bamford has been using Midjourney for around a year, but not for finished watch designs. “We were working on a collaboration with Chopard and I wanted to describe what I wanted the watch to look like to my team, but it was really hard,” he says. “I went to Midjourney and put in a description of what I wanted, and it threw out loads of ideas that became starting points that meant the team had a springboard to go forward. It’s saved me time.
Stigliani, though, says that the comparison between AI-generated watch design and NFTs only goes so far. “AI is more dangerous because the limit is difficult to see,” he says. But he speculates that it could ultimately be good for industries defined by hand-craftsmanship: “A handmade object made by an artisan will be even more ‘wow’.”
Hind Seddiqi: ‘Given the passion for horology in our market, we can certainly expect AI-designed watches to appeal to our customers’