AI spotlighted at leading textile trade fair in Germany

FRANKFURT, Jan. 9 (Xinhua) -- The application of artificial intelligence (AI) has drawn wide attention at one of the world's leading home and contract textile trade fairs that opened here on Tuesday.

As part of the opening press conference for Heimtextil 2024, a panel discussion was centered on the potential of AI technologies in the industry while panelists exploring the possibility of "speeding up creative processes, enabling the rapid production of designs and transcending time-consuming drawing processes on computers," according to a press release by Messe Frankfurt, the organizer of the trade fair.

AI is fundamentally redefining the economy, markets and industries, said Olaf Schmidt, vice president of Textiles &Textile Technologies of Messe Frankfurt. "As trade-fair experts, we know how to aid transformation efforts and reduce levels of complexity. With the global home textiles industry at Heimtextil in Frankfurt, now is the optimum time to spotlight the potential of artificial intelligence."

Schmidt was on the panel with Anja Bisgaard Gaede, founder of the trends and business agency SPOTT, as well as Danny Richman, AI consultant and inventor of the AI-based Fabric Genie design app.

The four-day trade fair has attracted more than 2,800 exhibitors from 60 countries this year, 25 percent more than last year. According to the organizers, 900 of them are exhibitors from China.

"Our trade-fair brands are back and more resilient than ever before. Moreover, they offer small to medium-sized companies in particular a high level of international stability. Despite a gloomy economic backdrop, Heimtextil continues to expand and offer a market overview of the latest global trends in the home and contract textile sector," Detlef Braun, a member of the executive board of Messe Frankfurt, said in his opening statement.