the new school's parsons school of design and lg announce artificial intelligence collaboration

New York, September 15, 2022 - The New School’s Parsons School of Design and LG today announced a new multi-year academic partnership to develop artificial intelligence designs, research advanced AI technologies, and apply AI thinking to creative practices. Parsons and LG AI Research will disseminate the findings of their research and collaboration to the broader academic and creative community in order to advance the usage of AI technologies in creative and design industries worldwide.

Throughout the academic partnership, LG AI Research and students from throughout The New School will actively work with LG’s platforms and ideation tools that utilize AI to assist designers and artists as they create and develop innovative designs. The tool is based on the works by LG AI Research, which includes a multi-modal AI that freely converts texts and images and has learned over 600 billion corpora and 350 million high-resolution images integrated with the text.

“I'm delighted to see this partnership between LG AI Research and Parsons School of Design,” said Cynthia Lawson Jaramillo, Dean of the School of Design Strategies at Parsons. “For more than 125 years, Parsons has been at the forefront of art and design education, and this partnership further solidifies that commitment, as what is more future-facing than exploring the intersections of art, design, creativity, and AI.”

"With the leadership of Professor Jeongki Lim, this partnership between Parsons and LG will cultivate critical dialogue and insights about the relationship between AI and creativity,” said Ben Barry, Dean of the School of Fashion at Parsons. “It will provide opportunities for Parsons students and faculty to work alongside LG industry leaders to explore emerging issues that arise when human and non-human actors engage in collective creative practice. This research will create a research agenda for creativity and technology that will impact industry and academic practice for years to come."

“Through our collaboration with Parsons, we want to create an Expert AI who helps maximize human creativity and productivity,” said Kyunghoon Bae, Chief of LG AI Research. “EXAONE Atelier will continue to research and develop into a global platform so that it can communicate with artists and understands and expresses their thoughts best, as an Expert AI not just AI that draws pictures.”

The partnership will also include events such as hackathons and exhibitions that showcase the works of the student community using the tools developed in the design-led research. 

The Creativity and AI Inaugural Symposium will take place on September 14, 2022, where AI applications in the creative field and collaborations between AI and artists will be presented and discussed. In addition, LG AI Research will hold a mini hackathon from September 17-18 to create designs and artistic works using EXAONE Atelier prototypes with Parsons students.

Moving forward, LG AI Research will be collaborating with global and domestic partners using the EXAONE Atelier prototype, and work towards upgrading the tool as it collects more expert opinions and builds partnerships with design schools and companies in South Korea and abroad.