LG AI Artist Tilda Winning the Award at New York Festivals

Last February, LG’s AI Artist Tilda debuted in the 2022 F/W New York Fashion Week (NYFW) and garnered global attention with its epoch-making achievement. This time, it has proudly returned as an award-winning AI artist.

Tilda was awarded multiple awards during the world-renowned advertising festival “New York Festivals” held in July in New York. Introducing various works from all over the world with its slogan of “Celebrating the world’s best work,” the New York Festivals is one of the world's top three advertisement festivals along with the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and CLIO Awards.

This year, the New York Festivals accepted entries in six tracks including Advertising, Radio, TV & Film, MIDAS, Global, and AME, and awards were given to excellent entries from each track. Along with its extensive history, the New York Festival is also known for attempting bold changes such as reforming and expanding its tracks in line with the flow of the times. “The Future Now,” a category that focuses on cases that used advanced technology to improve customer experience, was newly created this year. In the Best Use — Generative Creative sector, award-winning entries showcased creative experiences using AI, machine learning, data, etc. that wasn't possible 5 years ago.

LG AI Research's Tilda received the honor of being awarded gold and silver medals in The Future Now: Best Use — Generative Creative in the Advertising Awards track.

The award-winning entry was “Tilda — The First A.I. To Battle Against Climate Change,” which is about the achievements Tilda achieved in NYFW this February. “Tilda– Identity Born From Data” won the silver award with Tilda Book which contains Tilda's identity and content related to Tilda's branding. Going beyond winning the awards at the New York Festivals, Tilda is expected to establish itself as an example that provided a new standard in creating an identity for AI in the design industry.

Tilda is an AI artist brought to life using LG AI Research's super-giant AI “EXAONE,” which acts as Tilda's brain. For example, when text is given to Tilda, EXAONE will think like a human in various ways and produce an all-new image. Images created like that can be used in fashion design like the NYFW project, where AI actively participated from the start by coming up with new patterns, which can be hardly seen in the fashion industry.

Before creating the AI artist Tilda, LG AI Research researched the attitude of people towards AI technology. As a result, many people were skeptical about AI performing creative activities that require human emotion such as music, art, and writing. Facing public perception that sets the limit to AI in performing creative activities, it successfully completed its creative tasks and proved its ability to the world. It was able to overcome the long-standing prejudice toward AI through fashion and design.

Tilda designed and introduced a clothing collection in the NYFW with the concept of “Flowers on Venus” through collaboration with designer Park Younhee. When asked “What do you want to draw?” “What would a flower in Venus look like?” created a unique image, from which designer Park was inspired and added details to the clothing. During the duration of the project, Tilda created more than 3,000 images and patterns, and the “Greedilous by Tilda — Flowers on Venus” collection consisting of around 200 clothes was created.

This project widely attracted attention from the industry by selecting the concept of Venus, an inhabitable environment where no living being can inhabit due to the carbon dioxide atmosphere creating a greenhouse effect, and flower which represents life. By combining the two rather contradictory words, it raises awareness that Earth can eventually become like Venus if global warming persists and sends a message that there is still hope left in humanity by using flowers as a symbol of hope.

Previously, large-scale AI produced content in text such as novels, essays or columns based on language models. In this regard, Tilda is meaningful in that it expanded the creative activities of large-scale AI with multi-modal using a vision model and became the first case that applied it to the fashion industry.

Without limiting Tilda as a one-time project, LG included the process of developing Tilda's personality and values into two volumes of “Tilda Book” that may serve as a reference to other AI researchers. The first volume mainly talks about Tilda's identity, such as what influences Tilda and how it thinks, while the second volume visualizes how Tilda will spend the year of 2022. Not only did LG AI Research actively share technology with the industry and academia with Tilda Book which talks about Tilda's A to Z as an innovative AI artist, but it also accomplished a feat by winning awards at the New York Festival.

After its debut at the NYFW in February, Tilda was mentioned in multiple high-fashion magazines such as W and Vogue as an AI artist. Please look forward to LG AI Research's future endeavors as it continues to explore collaboration opportunities between AI artist and human in various creative areas such as art, music, and eco-friendly fashion.

▶LG AI Artist Tilda Makes a Stunning Debut at NYFW (Link)
▶Watch LG AI Artist Tilda's Digital Upcycling Project Video (Link)