Swatch’s new OpenAI tool lets you design your own watch

As with the Swatch x You, it is possible to customize the watch further by selecting the indexes or specifying the color of its mechanism. To save data center energy drain and rampant creativity, you’re only allowed three prompts per day on AI‑DADA, which Swatch spins as a “creative challenge that makes every attempt feel special.”

In the end, what we have here is a new version of the Swatch x You that has been connected to the image generation software provided by OpenAI, thus allowing the general public to decorate their watches with whatever graphics they see fit to dream up and deposit on them. What could go wrong here, I wonder?

I asked Roberto Amico, head of global digital at Swatch, what barriers have been put in place to prevent people from making, say, a Jeffrey Epstein Swatch, a White Power Swatch, or a Stormy Daniels Swatch. Or maybe a Swatch watch with the Rolex logo on it, or something that looks very similar to the Rolex logo.

Amico assures me that Swatch has already put guardrails in place, particularly around logos, for example, along with some restrictions already in place from OpenAI. But interestingly, Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek Jr. told me he competed with OpenAI for this Removes Some of the guardrails are in place to make AI‑DADA “more liberal and more swatchy.”

Hayek also admitted at the launch event in Switzerland that his first claims on AI-DADA were all about “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll”, but he was told that his own model wouldn’t allow for that. However, you can never underestimate the ingenuity of the general public at getting around obvious red flags – such as a ban on models that reproduce nudity or religious iconography – and creating something Swatch might not want to be associated with. Time will tell how bulletproof this model truly is.

Familiar faces

While the Swatch image model may be based on OpenAI, by default it is based on a dataset of over 40 years of Swatch watches, products, designs, art and street paintings. Does it resemble the pattern or color found on a certain Swatch dial or strap from the 1980s? It’s there. If you’re fond of collaborations between Keith Haring, Vivienne Westwood or Phil Collins, the model has this too. If you ask for a design inspired by something outside of what Swatch has put together in this archive, only then, Amico told me, does AI‑DADA go beyond the internal data set and extract the OpenAI data.