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This summer, ahead of the 2024 Paris Olympics, Nike unveiled 13 ultra-futuristic athletic shoes powered by artificial intelligence and designed for top athletes like Kylian Mbappé.
Thursday's event at the Palais Brongnard in Paris featured prototypes of the shoes worn by sprinter Shakari Richardson, marathon runner Eliud Kipchoge, NBA star Victor Wembaneyama and others.
The designs themselves are not available for purchase, but they feature dramatic features, such as the spiral fabric that wraps around the ankles of Richardson's deeply worn track shoes, and the transparent fins that protrude from the backs of Mbappé's models.
Nike says the shoe was designed by interviewing the brand's top athletes and running their design concepts through an AI model to generate prototype ideas.
The models are named part of the AIR collection, which stands for Athlete Imagined Revolution, a play on the brand's famous air bubble technology.
The company has been using gas-filled bubbles in the soles of certain models since the 1970s, and they have become one of the marque's most recognizable design features.
“There's no going back,” John Hawk, the brand's chief innovation officer, said in a news release. “An encounter between form, function, and fantasy.”
The Paris explosion also featured augmented reality-enhanced statues of Nike athletes such as LeBron James, previews of the company's representative uniforms for various Olympic teams, and high-profile guests such as rapper Travis Scott.
