Nike is Using Generative AI to Create Custom Shoe Designs

Nike is leveraging generative AI to create custom shoe designs in collaboration with star athletes, demonstrating the technology’s potential to enhance creativity and personalization in the design process.

Athlete-inspired AI revolution: Nike’s “Art of Victory” exhibition in Paris showcases prototype shoes designed with and for individual athletes across basketball, track, soccer, and tennis, with AI playing a key role in the ideation process:

• The exhibition features custom designs for basketball stars A’ja Wilson and Victor Wembanyama, sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson, and soccer legends Sam Kerr and Kylian Mbappé, among others.
• Alongside the final prototype for each athlete, Nike displayed smaller gray versions of other designs explored during the creative process, dubbed A.I.R. (Athlete Imagined Revolution).

AI as a creative tool: Nike used generative AI to generate images with various textures, materials, and colors, serving as a starting point for the design process and complementing traditional hand-sketching methods:

• Lead footwear designer Juliana Sagat acknowledged that AI is changing the way they work, providing new avenues for exploration and ideation.
• However, she emphasized that designing custom shoes for star athletes remains primarily a human-driven collaboration between the athlete and the designer.

Pushing AI boundaries: Nike executives noted that they had to encourage the AI systems to be more creative, as initial outputs tended to generate similar designs:

• VP Roger Chen revealed that many AI-generated images initially adhered to a similar fluid aesthetic when interpreting the concept of “Air.”
• To address this, Nike focused on inspiration points that would push each concept in a distinct direction, ensuring greater variety and originality in the designs.

Broader implications: Nike’s A.I.R. project demonstrates the potential for AI to augment and enhance human creativity in product design, rather than simply replacing it:

• The collaboration between AI and human designers can lead to more personalized and innovative designs tailored to individual athletes’ preferences and needs.
• As AI continues to advance, it may increasingly serve as a powerful tool for ideation and exploration in various creative fields, expanding the possibilities for designers and artists.

However, it remains to be seen how widely applicable this approach will be beyond custom designs for high-profile athletes and how it might impact the broader landscape of shoe design and manufacturing in the future.