BoF and Google Partner on Artificial Intelligence Experiment

Today on the VOICES stage, BoF and Google announced a partnership designed to explore and demonstrate the potential applications of artificial intelligence in fashion, and begin a dialogue between the industry and one of the global leaders in machine learning. In its first instance, the partnership has prompted a series of experiments with data sets from BoF's Fashion Week coverage, the early fruits of which were unveiled before VOICES attendees here in Oxfordshire. Representing Google was Amit Sood, who, in 2011, founded what became the Google Cultural Institute, a non-profit arm of the company, now housed in a grand hôtel particulier in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, that has partnered with over 1,300 museums and foundations to digitise everything from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Marc Chagall's ceiling at the Opéra Garnier, making them accessible on a platform called Google Arts & Culture. The institute is now experimenting with what machine learning can enable when applied to this catalogue, with a focus on fashion as well as art. Sood showed members of the VOICES community some of the work his team of engineers have been doing and, alongside BoF's Imran Amed, shared the results of applying Google's machine learning algorithms to over 70,000 runway looks from BoF's coverage of the last fours years of shows.