Machine learning and artificial intelligence have been used for several exciting tasks in recent years, including helping fight against mental illness, discovering new exoplanets, and teaching AI systems new languages. There's one task that AI hasn't mastered: making clothing. It probably seems a little mundane compared to exploring the universe, but for most of us, finding a good shirt is more useful than finding a new planet. A California-based clothing company has been trying to help AI make the move from the fabric of the cosmos to just…well, fabric. Original Stitch lets users create their own button-up dress shirts.

During the AI boom of the 1980s, the field also enjoyed a great deal of hype and rapid investment. Rather than considering the value of individual startups' ideas, investors were looking for interesting technologies to fund. This is why most of the first generation of AI companies have already disappeared. Companies like Symbolics, Intellicorp, and Gensym -- AI companies founded in the '80s -- have all transformed or gone defunct. And here we are again, nearly 40 years later, facing the same issues.

During the AI boom of the 1980s, the field also enjoyed a great deal of hype and rapid investment. Rather than considering the value of individual startups' ideas, investors were looking for interesting technologies to fund. This is why most of the first generation of AI companies have already disappeared. Companies like Symbolics, Intellicorp, and Gensym -- AI companies founded in the '80s -- have all transformed or gone defunct. And here we are again, nearly 40 years later, facing the same issues.

During the AI boom of the 1980s, the field also enjoyed a great deal of hype and rapid investment. Rather than considering the value of individual startups' ideas, investors were looking for interesting technologies to fund. This is why most of the first generation of AI companies have already disappeared. Companies like Symbolics, Intellicorp, and Gensym -- AI companies founded in the '80s -- have all transformed or gone defunct. And here we are again, nearly 40 years later, facing the same issues.

Artificial intelligence is going to be big in the world of fashion -- at least that's what startups, retailers, and investors are promising. They say the potential for AI to process data about your clothing and come up with new suggestions of what you might like to wear offers big opportunities. But, when it comes to actually turning this digital data into physical garments, it seems fashion and AI aren't quite a perfect fit. Take San Francisco startup Original Stitch. The company sells custom dress shirts, letting customers tweak colors and patterns online. As part of a beta service, it also let people send in a picture of their favorite shirt, which the company said it would measure up using machine vision; extracting the sizing information and creating perfect replicas on the cheap.

A custom shirt startup thinks it has found the key to making bespoke garments using artificial intelligence. Rather than having users measure themselves, Original Stitch's new Bodygram feature uses computer vision to extract the dimensions of a user's favorite button-down shirt and replicate it. Original Stitch was founded in 2015, and it has always promised to let men pick out unique shirts that were made just for them. But the company's existing process requires customers to measure themselves and then extrapolate the fit of a shirt from their proportions. This older process of measuring someone's body could lead to problems, according to Original Stitch CEO Jin Koh.