04/09/2026
Most of us already have an opinion on AI-made creative work. As a brand, and as people, we're solidly on the "human made" side. We're not sleeping through the revolution though. We use AI every day for coding, data analysis, streamlining processes, but the creative work - we leave to the people and we can't picture that ever changing.
But what if AI could help preserve design techniques that would otherwise die out along with the last craftsmen who know them? What actually is "tacit knowledge" - a craftsman's knowledge - and can it be captured as a set of rules? How do you digitize that kind of knowledge, and which models do you use to do it? Those are the questions professor Akie Kawagoe from Bunkyo Gakuin University in Tokyo is pursuing in her research. She visited us last Friday, together with professor Tomasz Olejniczak from Kozminski University. One of Professor Kawagoe's most interesting projects is her work on Edo Komon, a traditional Japanese technique for creating extremely fine patterns on fabric. That research has produced algorithms and generative tools to help create new Edo Komon patterns, at a time when the number of specialized pattern designers is shrinking fast.
Thank you for the visit, an amazing and rare chance to talk deeper about where human made ends and AI begins. About authenticity, about the future of crafts. About the things we don't want to hand over to AI, and the ones we might have to, someday. Just not yet.
