This celebrity wore the Met Gala's first-ever 'cognitive' dress

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The annual Met Gala is known for featuring celebrities in dazzling attire, but one dress in particular made waves at this year's event - which celebrated the theme of "Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology" - on May 2. Model Karolina Kurkova walked the red carpet in a Watson-created gown that captured the incredible potential of collaboration between human and machine.

Kurkova donned the first "cognitive" dress to be worn at the Met Gala. Embedded with LED lights, the dress changed colors in real time based on Twitter users' reactions to the night.

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The dress was the result of a groundbreaking collaboration between IBM Watson and Marchesa - the high-end womenswear brand founded by Keren Craig and Georgina Chapman.

"This is an opportunity to show how technology can help us push the boundaries of creativity and have an interactive dress that's a piece of art and a conversational piece as well - something that's almost living and breathing," says Chapman. "And to us, that was just a magical idea," 

To create the one-of-a-kind gown, Craig and Chapman fed the Watson Color Theory Tool, created by IBM Research, more than 150 images of Marchesa dresses and more than 100 red carpet photos. From there, the tool helped Marchesa pick out colors that would best reflect fans' emotions on the night. 

Marchesa also leveraged IBM Watson developer partner Inn0360 - specifically its IBM Watson-powered R&D platform - to source the best material for the creation. IBM Watson compared various material compositions, weights, and qualities to suggest the best-fit options for Marchesa.

Using the Tone Analyzer API, Watson tapped into the emotions and characters of tweets and changed the color of the dress based on what people were saying. As Watson's analysis of tweets detected joy, passion, excitement, encouragement, or curiosity, it triggered real-time color changes across the cognitive dress.

"I think that technology and the way it's progressing will definitely start playing a part in fashion," says Craig. "When I think of what Watson could do for Marchesa, there are so many different levels. It can heighten a whole business."

The cognitive dress is a great example of how IBM Watson can apply to myriad industries. Its ability to analyze huge volumes of typically unseen data and understand complex natural language enables it to make discoveries within healthcare, engineering, environmental, and ecological exploration - and now it has crossed over into fashion.  

"It's a partnership between man and machine," says Jeffrey Arn, IBM Watson strategist. "What cognitive means for fashion, unlocking new considerations and sharing expertise, breaks us out of our bias. There are implications all across the industry."

Watch the video below for the behind-the-scenes story on how this dress was created.

Learn more about the cognitive dress.

This post is sponsored by IBM Watson.