Dataiku Releases New ‘AI & Us’ Documentary Series

Dataiku has released a new documentary series exploring how artificial intelligence, now more accessible than ever, is transforming various industries.

The company says its objective for the web series, “AI & Us,” is to build a link between AI and business, through the eyes of its practitioners, in order to create meaningful conversations encompassing issues facing both businesses and wider society around the implementation of machine learning-driven processes.

The series made its debut on Sept. 7 with its first episode centered on AI and the fashion world. “Dressed by Machines” examines the impact of AI and ML on the $2.2 trillion industry and how it is being used to deliver customized recommendations, trend forecasting, and inventory optimization.

According to Dataiku, the lifetime of the average garment is only 5 weeks long in today’s fast fashion-oriented society due to inexpensive, disposable clothing that is purchased at a rate of 56 million metric tons per year. AI can help better match fashion trends with consumers’ needs in a bid to keep clothes in closets for longer.

Fashion Innovation Agency’s Emily Cies shows how 3D fashion imagery is created for virtual try-ons. Source: Dataiku

The premiere episode features interviews with faculty of the Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion, a group focused on finding breakthroughs where fashion and technology merge. One project they highlight is the reactive reality rig, which is a turntable connected to cameras and computing equipment to take 360-degree photos of a fashion ensemble. The images are then uploaded and instantly processed to create a 3D scanned object. Users can scan their faces using smartphones and enter their measurements to create digital avatars that can virtually “try on” the 3D clothing.

As more and more use cases emerge, it is important to note that these tools are not meant to make designers obsolete: “AI cannot replace the fashion designer from a fashion perspective. However, I believe the very element of artificial intelligence is about randomness. Like you give data to an algorithm and wait for a result, and you don’t know what it is going to look like. For me this is the very basis of the creative process as a whole. So I think it can be a tool to collaborate with,” said Costas Kazantzi, a creative technologist at the Fashion Innovation Agency.

The series is hosted by data scientist Shaun McGirr, Dataiuku’s regional VP of AI strategy who has more than 15 years of experience working across multiple industries, including consulting, automotive, and doctorate-level training in applied statistics. McGirr also co-hosts the “Half Stack Data Science” podcast.

Fashion Innovation Agency’s Costas Kazantzis discusses how he uses AI to explore creativity in fashion. Source: Dataiku

Future episodes will feature other interesting AI topics including how society’s perception of AI technology and its associated ethical questions are being discussed, how it is being used to drive innovation in the $6.1 billion insurance industry, and how it may assist in resolving the gender pay gap through surpassing human bias in hiring decisions.

“In ‘AI & Us,’ we looked beyond obvious use cases to show how the ever-lowering entry barrier to AI is transforming whole industries,” said host McGirr. “It was a privilege to learn from people with truly diverse perspectives, whether seasoned AI experts, relative novices making an outsized impact, or those taking a wider perspective on how changes in society are driving AI adoption. Throughout the series, we strove to puncture hype, demystify buzzwords, and remind everyone building AI of their obligations to act responsibly with an eye on the future.”

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