The vast majority of robots have never made it out of their laboratories, but there were plenty of signs in 2023 that robots are beginning to have their moment in the sun. These photos showcase some of the most eye-catching machines from the past year, and also tell the story of a class of technology that is becoming increasingly visible in everyday life. Boston Dynamics' robot dog Spot, first seen in 2016, may seem old hat, but its real-world applications have grown since it became commercially available in 2019. The New York Police Department has bought two Spot robots, to be deployed in situations that present a high danger to humans, while e-commerce giant Otto Group has employed the robots in its warehouses for equipment inspections. This year, Spot could also be seen removing a model's jacket as part of a Paris Fashion Week show.

As an investor and entrepreneur in cutting-edge technologies like Ethereum, generative AI, and autonomous driving, I couldn't resist diving into the world of metaverse fashion. Last week, Metaverse Fashion Week (MFW) 2023 took its second-ever strut down the virtual runway, a year after debuting in the thick of 2022's metaverse frenzy. The event, hosted primarily in metaverse gaming platform Decentraland, saw a massive drop in attendance from 2022. However, it may have offered clues towards a path forward for brands in the virtual realm. Decentraland's Metaverse Fashion Week experienced a significant decrease in unique visitors this year.

Is artificial intelligence about to take over the fashion world, one runway at a time? AI-powered text-to-image generators like OpenAI's Dall-E and Midjourney have gone absolutely viral, and for good reason. Sure, they can produce some seriously nutty imagery, but at the end of the day it's the quality of that output, whether realistic or outlandish, that makes it so captivating -- not to mention useful. That in mind, these programs, though still in beta, are already starting to make their way into creative industries. And yesterday, Twitter got a taste of what the beginnings of text-to-image-generated fashion might look like.

Imagine: social distancing restrictions are over. It's safe(r) to go out again! For once, after a long, grueling era of pandemic stress, you make plans to go out to a special public event. It hasn't happened for the longest time. Clearly, this is a cause for celebration and what else to mark the occasion than to dress yourself up a little?

Estimated to be worth $3T by the end of the decade, per CB Insights' Industry Analyst Consensus, the fashion industry is growing at a fast pace, led by cutting-edge technologies. From robots that sew and cut fabric to AI algorithms that predict style trends, VR mirrors in dressing rooms, shopping off the runway and a number of other innovations show how technology is automating and evolving the industry. In 2016, Google collaborated with online fashion platform Zalando and production company Stinkdigital to launch predictive design engine, Project Muze. The algorithm consisted of a set of aesthetic parameter and trained a neural network to comprehend colours, textures and styles derived from Google Fashion Trends Report and data sourced by Zalando -- to create designs in sync with with style preferences identified by the network. Amazon is taking an algorithmic approach to fashion as well.

Fashion is one of the biggest industries globally, and revenues in the global apparel market are expected to reach $2.25 trillion by 2025 – but it's not the first industry that probably pops into your mind when you think about artificial intelligence. However, designers and brands that embrace the latest technology to push the limits of design, manufacturing, and production will come out on top in the fast-changing world of fashion. Here are a few of the biggest tech trends that are transforming the fashion industry. Fashion brands are reshaping their approach to product design and development by predicting what customers will want to wear next. Trend forecasting is typically labor-intensive, involving manual or digital observation and data collection from fashion designers and influencers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in fashion is no longer a secret and has widely been used to mostly help businesses to streamline processes and increase sales. But the skillsets of fashion designers and computer scientists are miles apart, so it's not until recently that the creative applications of AI in this industry have been explored. "Initial uses of artificial intelligence have focused on quantifiable business needs, which has allowed for start-ups to offer a service to brands," Matthew Drinkwater, head of the fashion innovation agency (FIA) at London College of Fashion (LCF), told Forbes. "Creativity is much more difficult to quantify and therefore more likely to follow behind." Seeing the opportunity for AI to play a bigger role in the creative process, LFC has launched an AI course aiming to develop creative fashion solutions and experiences that challenge the current approaches to fashion design.

Several weeks ago Google Arts & Culture and the Bussiness of Fashion (BoF) released the interactive visualization'Runway Palette' by Cyril Diagne. The tool was released at the BoF VOICES 2019 conference and boasts over 144,000 looks from more than 3,800 fashion shows and 992 designers. If you could attend one fashion show per day, it would take you more than 10 years to see them all. The interactive tool is both visually stunning and highly informative -- It is also free to use and quite easy to get lost in! If you're curious about which designers influenced your closet you can upload your own photo and find looks that match.

What insights can machine learning give us about fashion? Google Arts & Culture collaborated with The Business of Fashion (BoF) to create an interactive visualization of fashion show archives from 2015-2019. We came together with The Business of Fashion to view their collection of 140,000 photos of runway looks from almost 4,000 fashion shows around the world. If you could attend one fashion show per day, it would take you more than 10 years to see them all. This experiment makes this library easy and fun to explore in one single visualization.

A fashion show in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that used drones to walk clothes down a runway has been ripped apart by Arab fashion elites and critics who compared the dresses to ghosts and dementors. Ali Nabil Akbar tells BBC Arabic he thought showing the dresses via drone during the Saturday show at Hilton Hotel was "suitable for Ramadan." "The idea is that we want to add things that are simple yet beautiful," Akbar tells the BBC. "Even the décor and set-up of the hall was organized beautifully, everything involved innovation." I'm dying at this fashion show in Saudi they weren't allowed female models pic.twitter.com/5xxpMBk4Nr