This Invisible Computer made its way to Paris Fashion Week
Naomi Campbell walking the Coperni SS2024 runway, via Instagram: Naomi
At the last Paris Fashion Week in September 2023, Humane and Coperni partnered to design outfits paired with an invisible computer.
Artificial Intelligence has been at the centre of everyone’s attention in 2023. From ChatGPT to Microsoft to Spotify, the tech world showed that the future and present will be moulded by AI. But this time around, it’s a Parisian fashion luxury house, named Coperni, that is utilising the perks of AI and the aesthetic of tech as an integral part of their edgy artistic direction. In September 2023, the label partnered with Humane, an innovative, yet secretive tech company whose mission is to bring humans back in touch with themselves and the world around them by building tech that feels familiar, natural, and human. This atypical crossover is a great example of technology's immense power transcending culture, through fashion.
TECH AS A FASHION STATEMENT
Coperni’s story started in 2013, in Paris and distinguished itself through stylish and eclectic looking accessories. Over the years, the fashion house started infusing technology into their outfits and used it as a fashion statement, the same way we choose Airpods and headphones as part of our attire. In fact, they are an integrant piece of people everyday carry and their design has become the most essential criteria in a consumer’s purchase decision over its sound quality. The fashion label crafts vintage CD-PLAYER bags with wired headphones, reinventing the purpose of a bag, not only being a fashion accessory but also a device to play music. Besides, they power their shows and visuals by creating futuristic and ground-breaking designs and don’t hesitate to bring in dog-shaped robots, just like in their Fall Winter 2023 show. They featured robots from Boston Dynamics which are normally used in nuclear sites, construction projects, research laboratories and university classrooms. Instead, Coperni chose to make the robodogs hand a bag to the models while they’re walking the runway. The french couture brand wants to make tech part of fashion, but Humane also wants clothing to be part of the technology.
CULTURE: THE FABRIC OF THE TECH WORLD
If you’ve watched the movie Her, by Spike Jonze, you may already be familiar with super AI assistants, a piece of technology that you can interact with by chatting with it. That is the closest example to describe what Humane is trying to build. This mysterious company, built by ex-Apple designers and engineers involved in the creation of the iPhone, has been turning heads in the tech world, especially in the AI space. In May 2023, they shocked the community with an exclusive preview of an invisible computer using the power of the user’s voice and their hands. They call it the AI pin and uses ambient technology, meaning technology will fade into the background and could be activated via voice command, specific motions and triggers. Therefore, there is no touchscreen nor button which makes the AI agent the interface, in the same vein as Siri or Alexa, and the device understands you with the contextual data it learns from your surroundings as the user interacts with it.
Humane Via Instagram
This makes the experience feel magical, natural and unobtrusive. You could converse with it just like you would with a regular human being. You can answer phone calls in the palm of your hand thanks to an holographic laser, making your hand the screen. Furthermore, the device is able to translate the user’s voice in other various languages with the speaker’s voice and tonality. Also it can catch up on events, emails or messages you missed during the day. We could imagine this becoming more useful in the future and being able to give information on your favourite football team’s last game result or get alerted to carry an umbrella before leaving home due to prediction of bad weather ahead. before leaving home and to take an umbrella.
Some believe that ambient computing is the next stage of consumer computing and Humane is one of them. They collaborated with Coperni during their show in September 2023. Some of the fits featured the AI pin, a small accessory, no bigger than a phone charger, attached to a garment.
Humane Via Instagram
This partnership aims to bring awareness to the devices humans utilise on a daily basis. Screens tend to grab attention and make us forget about our surroundings. Instead of being a separate accessory, why not make tech wearable? This runway has demonstrated a glimpse of what the future could look like. In other words, the device could serve as an assistant capable of analysing the user’s context and could adapt to it without removing you from the real world. This shows how far Artificial Intelligence has come in terms of influence over the culture and in the world technology. We still haven’t seen the full extent of what this pin can do.
Tech is the new cool! Coperni understood they could leverage the aesthetic of technology and bet on Humane to show a glimpse of what the future would look like through outfits paired with the AI pin. Meanwhile, Humane chose an original way to promote their first and unique product which aims at replacing our smartphones. It is still unclear what other features the AI pin will have since no date of release has been announced yet. Both brands seem to express that mankind and machines can live in harmony.
As technology continues to evolve, Humane is at the forefront of creating a better human experience and promises to offer a fun and fresh perspective on building innovative technology.
In addition to fashion, what other industry will it disrupt next?
