Designed by A.I.: Your Next Couch, Sweater, and Set of Golf Clubs

At Callaway, the high-end golf-equipment stalwart, the process of making clubs has always been quite labor-intensive--from grinding and polishing clubheads to crafting wood-and-steel-shafted irons and wedges. The company has also long combined such artisanal handwork with technological innovation, even partnering with aerospace titan Boeing recently to codesign several aerodynamic clubs. So when the company set out about four years ago to make its latest club line, called Epic Flash, it took the next evolutionary technological step, turning to artificial intelligence and machine learning for help. A typical club-design process might involve five to seven physical prototypes; for Epic Flash, Callaway created 15,000 virtual ones. From those, an algorithm determined the best design, selecting for peak performance--i.e., ball speed--while also conforming to the rules set forth by the U.S. Golf Association.