Lighter, more stable, more beautiful: Artificial intelligence designs a new type of tennis racket

• AI programs such as DALL·E and Midjourney promote a more playful approach to artificial intelligence.
• With their help, designers at All Design Lab have now rethought the basic shape of a tennis racket.
• The result with “Hìtëkw” is a racket that is lighter and more stable than conventional rackets.

New Jersey-based design company All Design Lab has reimagined the tennis racket. To do this, they also “fed” the AI ​​software DALL·E and Midjourney (you can try Midjourney for yourself for free here) with text fragments and let the artificial intelligence run free.

New tennis racket from All Design Lab

“From the very beginning of this project, we wanted to try new approaches. We wanted to create something exciting, something to tell a story about. The AI ​​programs that were coming into fashion like DALL·E or Midjourney made us rethink how to such a project can begin,” says the project manager.

Since the AI ​​can only create new suggestions based on existing images from the web, the designers were not completely satisfied with the first results, as no really new approach was recognizable. The proposals differed significantly from the well-known tennis racket design, but that was not enough for the creators.

“We learned that while these programs are incredibly powerful, they always depend on role models,” says All Design Lab. The result is almost reminiscent of something that comes from a 3D printer. The word Hìtëkw goes back to the language of the Lenni Lenape, a culturally closely related tribe in what is now the Northeastern United States. Translated, the word means “tree”. Appropriate, when looking at the organic-looking end of the bat.

The makers are convinced of the performance of Hìtëkw, but do not reveal any specific weight information. One is much more excited about criticism, both positive and negative, from first users and other designers.

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