AI is a useful tool in the massive toolbox for creative people. About a year ago, our designers started using AI to assist with workflow. You could get 30 new [shoe design] ideas immediately, but unless you’re really good at prompts, you can lose control of the process. When people rely on it as the main tool, it’s very narrow. AI will generate things that are flat-out impossible to make or so out-of-the-world that’s going to cost us and the consumer a phenomenal amount of money.
I am generally weary of technology. I grew up in shoe factories. After I graduated from Saint Francis, my father co-founded KEEN and I became a trainee to learn the business, mainly production. I spent my 20s in factories all over Southeast Asia. I work in research and development and have seen a lot of tech that promised to change shoe production like 3D printing of custom software.
We created our own AI platform for the rapid generation of visual representation of shoes. Our designers had been using AI to iterate ideas, but it hadn’t generated a design we could use. Our new platform is firewalled and runs all the different AI models. Our team, which includes a social psychologist, engineers, designers, developers and an insight specialist who does real-world testing, spent months building data sets and digital agents. If you set up AI properly and engage it in the right way, it’s mind-blowing how quickly it will learn.
Speed is crucial, because it takes us a long time to make a shoe. Our first time using our AI platform, we went from a blank page to four different design ideas, production plans and marketing briefs in four hours. Normally that takes six months. We are just learning from our platform and can’t launch these shoes tomorrow, but they are solid projects.
It’s amazing how intelligent AI is when we give it the right information. There are concepts and patents I’ve invented with one other person. Only two of us really know this stuff, and now AI knows it, too, maybe not quite as well but pretty close. I work with blueprints and 3D files, and there’s a gap in AI’s ability in image generation and assessing a 2D technical drawing. Large language models are not great at math.
I have a specific set of skills and problem solving I’ve learned from years in factories and through life. I picked a lot of critical thinking skills from my Saint Francis teachers and my good classes and good friends. I’ve worked a lot with scientists and biomechanics over the years. Now with our AI platform, I have this knowledge at my fingertips.
For me innovation is an opportunity for the creator and end user. A lot of people define it as something new or different. At KEEN, it’s an opportunity for us to expand a market or our business. For our customers, it’s an opportunity to have a better life. We make outdoor shoes to explore the world. AI is helping us open up opportunities. That’s what real innovation does.