29 January 2023

Bakery Ströck premiered in Austria the bespoke interface 'AI-Krapfinator' powered by DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion and calls for submissions to 'The Artificial Krapfen Challenge'

The Austrian Bäckerei Ströck runs an own store and gastronomy chain, supplies its products to supermarkets, schools, hospitals, or kindergärten, counts to one of the country's most innovative producers of baked goods - and is the most imaginative creator of digital gadgets concerning pastries. Especially the filled doughnut 'Krapfen' (donut without hole and traditionally filled with apricot jam) has inspired the bakery's artistic team for interactive digital initiatives in the last years. In 2020, Ströck started the petition to include an official krapfen emoji. The petition is still ongoing. In a video on krapfengate.at, the typical Austrian pastry 'krapfen' is compared to a donut or a croissant; both already have emojis. Last year, Ströck launched the first NFT krapfen, which was created together with the Kollektiv CryptoWiener, and recently, 'The Artificial Krapfen Challenge' was started on thefluffykrapfenclub.com where users are invited to create own artworks by using the 'AI-Krapfinator'. The interface allows German language entries to the image generating AI DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion. For the technological realization and management, Ströck collaborated with the agency Katzlberger Consulting and the advertising agency Ogilvy.

Fashion.at tested the tool and asked for images of models in the backstage area of a catwalk fashion presentation eating krapfen or for images of fashion models eating krapfen while their hair is styled, etc.

The AI-generated visuals can be downloaded and/or submitted to the gallery and art competition 'The Artificial Krapfen Challenge'. It's announced that the best krapfen artworks will be selected by a jury of experts headed by Wolfgang Bergmann, Managing Director of the Austrian Gallery Belvedere, and exhibited at the Artficial Krapfen Vernissage on 20 February at the Belvedere 21 in Vienna. Details on how to participate are published at thefluffykrapfenclub.com.

Images: Two pictures from a series generated by Fashion.at on 29 January 2023 at thefluffykrapfenclub.com.