- Syntilay has launched AI-designed, 3D-printed shoes.
- The footwear was designed with a mixture of Midjourney and Vizcom AI
- The $ 150 shoes use smartphone foot scans for a fully customized fit.
If you like crocs but wish they had more of a science-fiction back story, you’re lucky. A starting company called Syntilay uses AI and 3D printing to produce a new line of shoes. The futuristic footwear is now available for $ 150 a pair. These slides are not cheap, but innovation is rare.
Syntilay uses a mixture of AI tools supplemented with human art to create its shoes, which looks a bit like a deep -sea fish at first glance. The designers were dependent on Midjourney to develop the basic shape of the shoe. Then a human artist refined the idea of a sketch for inspiration that was uploaded to Vizcom AI, which produced a 3D model based on the sketch. AI then helped design and integrate textures and patterns into shoe design and finish their look.
Entrepreneur Ben Weiss founded Syntilay, but it has support from Reebok co-founder Joe Foster, who added some credibility to the idea. The shoes are available in five colors: orange, red, beige, black and blue. They must evoke South Mead’s work, the artist behind the iconic visuals in Blade Runner and Aliens.
AI shoes
The $ 150 shoes are 3D printed in Germany and are specially made for each customer who is sent out after about three weeks. If you want to buy a pair, you will be asked to scan your feet with a smartphone camera so that the shoes fit perfectly, even adjustment for the usual small differences between people’s right and left feet.
There is also the question of practical. While scanning your feet with a phone camera sounds straightforward, not everyone is eager to go full technology just to buy shoes. And what happens if the care is not quite right after all that scans and prints? This is Hurdles Syntilay will have to address as it scales its operations.
The question, of course, is whether the market is ready for AI-driven footwear. Syni’s shoes will have to prove that they are worth the expense and wait when it comes to things like comfort and durability.
$ 150 is a pretty big price tag when generic slides similar to crocs can cost $ 20 or even less. Syntilay has to hope that it is the design, special care promise and gimmick of AI-Design Gains over the early adopters.
There have certainly been personalized shoes before, but combining AI and 3D printing can lure those who want to be trendsetters.
