Asahi Group Holdings & Cogent Labs Jointly Develop “AI Creator System,” the World’s First Package Design Generator. Product Package Design Generation Trials Start April 2020

Cogent Labs Inc. (Head Office: Minato-ku, Tokyo; Representative Directors: Jun Iinuma & Eric Hideyuki Whiteway, hereinafter “Cogent Labs”), a developer and provider of advanced AI technology, and Asahi Group Holdings, Ltd. (Head Office: Sumida-ku, Tokyo; President: Akiyoshi Koji, hereinafter “Asahi Group”) have jointly developed the “AI Creator System,” which generates completely original package designs that incorporate the latest consumer design preference & trends. Trials service will begin in April 2020.

Package design is of significant importance in consumer’s product selection and purchase decision process.  However, the wide adoption of social media in recent years has enabled access to overwhelmingly design information leading to further diversification in consumer’s design preferences.  At the same time, design trends & preferences are changing at ever faster pace, making it increasingly difficult for companies to create package design that resonate with the latest consumer preference using traditional design methods only.
By leveraging deep learning technology, the “AI Creator System” is able to extract the underlying attributes and characteristics of “good design” which can often be subtle and      difficult for humans to correctly identify.

The system is composed of 2 parts, the Design Generation System, which creates multiple designs based on images and concepts fed to it, and the Design Evaluation System, which determines evaluate how good or bad each design is and scores them accordingly.
The Design Generation System can automatically generate multiple design proposals from its image database that corresponds to the desired concept and consumer trend & preferences.
The Design Evaluation System then uses deep learning to evaluate these automatically generated designs. The system’s artificial intelligence engine is trained with inputs from groups of design sensitive users; and is able to extract underlying attributes of “good design” to numerically score the given design image.
In this design approach, the “AI Creator System” creates multiple designs reflecting current trends without preconceived design biases. In addition, the system can easily kept up to the fast changing consumer design preference trend through occasional retraining with new design data.

The development of this unique combinational AI approach into a real system is the first of its kind.  The Design Evaluation System has succeeded  to create unique good designs, trained by inputs from about 300 design experts of 3000 images from the Design Generation System.

■Future Outlook

Cogent Labs is considering offering this system to other sectors to contribute to improvements in consumer’s experience through excitement & joy from good, creative package designs; as well as catalyzing retail floor sales.
We are also looking forward to users creating unique differentiation and advantage through the use of AI Creator, as well as more efficient new product development.
Cogent Labs will continue to strive to create a prosperous and healthy future for humanity through artificial intelligence by achieving a variety of innovations based on the latest research in the field.

■Overview of the “AI Creator System”

The “AI Creator System” is the world’s first automatic package design generation system combining multiple deep learning models. It enables rapid automatic creation of outstanding designs without having to rely on experience and instinct, which until now was only possessed by people working in the design field.
*The “AI Creator System” is patent pending (as of March 9, 2020).

■Benefits of Using the System

・Proposes original package designs that could not be conceived of using conventional methods by training its artificial intelligence with image data of various current designs.
・Helps companies response faster to rapidly changing global design trends.
・Grows sales of new and renewed products through design originality and rapid time to market.
・Improves the efficiency and productivity of designers and marketers.

■ About Cogent Labs Inc.

Description of Business: Research and development of advanced artificial intelligence and provision of related solution services.
Cogent Labs is an artificial intelligence startup based in Tokyo that develops cutting-edge yet practical AI services that can be used from the cloud to the edge. It provides AI-based products and services to support companies that are dealing with such issues as improving productivity in the workplace or that are facing shortages of skilled labor. It offers the following as services: Tegaki, AI-OCR that boasts high recognition accuracy when reading handwritten characters; Kaidoku, which can understand and analyze natural language; and Time Series Forecasting (TSF), which forecasts the future based on time series data. It also offers custom AI consulting and development services.