One of the new investors that joined Nothing’s funding round in September was Qualcomm Ventures, the investment arm of one of the biggest AI chipmakers in the world. This was a strategic investment, with Pei adding that Nothing will use some of the fresh funds to design AI products — both devices and software — for consumers.
Pei says Nothing is working on improving its inter-device connectivity and AI that enables its products to capture context, so that something you hear, say or see that’s captured by a Nothing product can “flow seamlessly from one device to another”, within a software system bespoke to each consumer.
Yet, there is a trust crisis within creative communities when it comes to brands openly using AI. Perhaps nowhere is this stronger than within the fashion industry, where brands’ early attempts to use AI for creative campaigns have so far been met with trepidation.
Smith is cognisant of this. “I think we’re not really talking, certainly for luxury fashion brands, about a situation where AI is going to be replacing human creativity,” he says. “So I think the key has got to be as much openness and transparency as possible, to bring people in on the journey. I want to show them that actually, AI can be beneficial for the creative process.”
Smith argues that fashion companies are all already using AI a lot, even if they’re reluctant to admit it. “Most fashion companies would probably have over 20 different AI projects live right now, from supply chain optimization, through to visual prototypes replacing photoshop,” he says. “These are all, to me, ways of aiding creativity.”
A future of interdisciplinary collabs — and robots
Nothing released Essential Space in March, its first software product, built alongside the launch of its Nothing Phone (3a), which is designed to make organizing content across its devices easier for creative work. The AI-powered feature allows users to save visual inspiration from social posts they’ve seen or from photos of the world around them, summarize brainstorming meetings, and create to-do lists synced with calendars, bypassing several manual steps.
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