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AI Tailors Can Wait (bloomberg.com)
Bloomberg Businessweek: Original Stitch has all the trappings of an e-commerce success story. The pitch is simple: Original Stitch uses computer-vision software to review photos of your most beloved dress shirts uploaded to the company website, then delivers perfectly tailored copies. We tried it -- the only problem was that it didn't work. When the first shirt arrived too tight around the chest and too long in the sleeves, we figured an editor's sloppy photography was to blame, but the problems persisted with a second attempt. A third shirt, ordered under a different name to make sure we wouldn't get special treatment, could barely be buttoned up. The sleeves felt like tourniquets. "We tried to push the envelope," Original Stitch founder Jin Koh acknowledged after we confronted him with the results. "Obviously, it's still in beta." In December, three months after launching the service, Koh quietly pulled it down. He's returned to asking users to fill out a questionnaire with their own measurements while he works out the bugs.
http://www.vetta.org/documents...
which leads to...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a form of A.I.
It's not strong A.I.
Strong A.I. could be an extinction level event for humans. I think limits on available power will slow it down enough for us to have time to react. But there's a significant chance for a failure of friendliness combined with superhuman intelligence and superman manipulativeness. And people researching strong A.I. don't appear to be taking sufficient safeguards to me.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The obvious thing here is that they are trying to copy an existing thing, not by taking a picture of the wearer, but by taking a picture of the item. Take a look at all the chinese counterfeit websites (here's one: gamiss.com ) generally any website that is 85% off and looks like a generic shop with a label applied and uses the same photos you see on eBay are selling counterfeits (anything "new without tags" is counterfeit.) Now take a look at the reviews for these sites, you will see the same thing
"Ill fitting"
"looks like it was made in a sweatshop"
"what the fuck is this trash"
Especially with sites that deal with wedding, bridesmaid and prom dresses.
This "AI" is no better than the counterfeiters. The reason is that they're working from a photo. I bought one of these dresses from one of these sites after seeing it in the advertisements for like a month just for the hell of it. When I got it, the material used was basically garbage, and it was too short. I'd have to be 4' 6" for it to go to my knees.