The Henry Ford Acquires World's Only 'Cognitive Dress' That Reads Conversational Tone

DEARBORN (WWJ) You're happy, you're sad, you're tired ... no, no, wait, what are you telling us?

Ask the dress.

The Henry Ford in Dearborn announced the acquisition of IBM and Marchesa's cognitive dress, the world's first-of-its-kind created using IBM Watson technology. Usually you don't want to know what people are saying behind your back about what you're wearing. But this one puts it right out there.

Model Karolina Kurkova wore the dress during its debut at the 2016 Met Gala.

Using Watson Tone Analyzer, the dress can tap into sentiment from social media posts that include a specific hashtag, extracting context around the tone of the message. During the Met Gala, the LED lights embroidered into the flowers on the dress changed colors in real-time based on public social media conversations related to the dress.

"IBM and Marchesa's cognitive dress is an excellent representation of innovation at work today, from the collaboration behind the dress to the technology involved to make it possible," said Patricia Mooradian, president of The Henry Ford. "We are delighted to bring this into our collection and give our guests the opportunity to be inspired by the innovators changing our world today."

Watson is a cognitive computing system that understands the world in a way similar to humans, through senses, learning, and experience. Available as a portfolio of services on an open developer platform, Watson can quickly analyze massive amounts of structured and unstructured data to reveal insights and patterns previously undiscovered.

The IBM and Marchesa dress collaboration is just one example of how cognitive computing is unlocking discovery and human creativity, per The Henry Ford. These same technologies used in the creation of the dress are also being used in other industries beyond fashion, including health care, engineering, finance, retail, and education.

Watson is being applied to human creativity in all forms to gain insights from data to inform decisions, solve problems, and to inspire creativity.

"From fashion designers, to architects, to musicians and more, professionals are tapping into cognitive systems like Watson to discover new avenues for creativity and inspiration," said Ann Rubin, vice president, Branded Content and Global Creative at IBM. "The cognitive dress is an example of the many ways people are using Watson to augment human thinking and fuel creativity."

The cognitive dress will be on display on April 13 inside Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation.