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Huh, I shopped for clothes using AI today. Not super relevant to the Googlebook ad, but in case the perspective is interesting to you: I'm quite tall (194cm) b

Huh, I shopped for clothes using AI today. Not super relevant to the Googlebook ad, but in case the perspective is interesting to you: I'm quite tall (194cm) but not very wide, so I usually struggle with buying clothes online. I used AI to scrape a bunch of clothing stores to see whether they sold a men's shirt with an LT or slim fit size, in stock, and matching a particular vibe.

adrithmetiqa 5mo ago
I’m sorry but I’m not buying this argument. This problem was solved in 2005 with search engines.
- talldan 5mo ago
  Search engines are good for finding shops, but not individual items. There also aren't many shops that are dedicated to only tall, usually big and tall instead. I don't know how good AI is at these kinds of tasks, but I can tell you that it's not easy manually, especially in some parts of the world where you might have to factor in shipping/return costs.
SeanAnderson 5mo ago
Did it work? Did you buy something?
- robbie-c 5mo ago
  Undecided. One of the sites didn't have an LT but the LLM flagged that chest dimensions on their large were narrower than others, so could be worth trying.
  - OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
    That you didn't just search for "Big and Tall" or some-such tells me the search engines aren't as decent as I might think. Are search engines really that useless? Or did you start with a search for "clothes, tall" and then use AI to scrape the hits to find more details?
    - robbie-c 5mo ago
      I did that first, which didn't work for a couple of reasons. Many "big and tall" stores are the intersection only, and many of the stores didn't quite have the right vibe. I do have some of my wardrobe from places like 2tall.com but I was looking for something very silly for an in-joke for a friends vacation.
etchalon 5mo ago
As 204cm human, I have also built a thing to scrape all the major brands for LT sizes. It is deeply annoying we have to do this.
- bigfudge 5mo ago
  Can you share it?! Will save me the trouble …
- duzer65657 5mo ago
  6'4" with relatively proportionate body-parts: buy the tall/long and you're likely good. At your height, all bets are off!
  - etchalon 5mo ago
    At my height, I have to do custom on a lot of things, though LT sizes can work for some pieces (short sleeves anything, some long sleeve items if the cut is intended to have longer sleeves). It's a frustrating existence.
Jzush 5mo ago
Yeah, that’s how AI should be used. If the ad was using AI as a tool to solve a real problem then I’d be down. But that’s not what this is. This is AI as a shopping cart, or a thing to organize the busy life of a casually rich person who flies to Japan to buy vintage clothes. Basically I’m only saying the ad is wildly out of touch with reality.
- MiSeRyDeee 5mo ago
  What made you believe it is not someone else's real problem? You're simply not targeted audience of the ads
  - skywhopper 5mo ago
    It’s not enough people's problem to make it worth building a mass market advertising campaign around it.
    - starkparker 5mo ago
      even for advertising it's not even a problem to aspire toward having
  - loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
    [flagged]
evan_ 5mo ago
This is kinda the exception that proves the rule. I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience, but I will bet you anything that any searches you try to do will lead you to the same half-dozen giant mail-order clothing vendors that everyone already knows about.
- dadrock 5mo ago
  I will do my best to remember your opinion next time I use AI to buy clothes, but given the fact that IDGAF, it's not going to be easy.
- borski 5mo ago
  Great ideas always start with a niche. Moreover, they almost always start out looking dumb.
  - spectralseq 5mo ago
    and therefore, ideas that seem dumb and niche must be great
  - intended 5mo ago
    The example was of someone who is tall and doesn’t find clothes that fit them. For the average consumer, clothes fit them. There is no generalizability from a niche possible here, since the mass market is already served.
    - nilkn 5mo ago
      Actually, I think you're really underestimating how many people struggle to find clothes that fit them well. Most people's bodies are not perfectly average. For clothes not to fit well, you don't need to be a significant outlier in one dimension. Just the accumulation of several smaller deviations from average can be enough to create an awkward fit. Beyond that, even if we limit it to height alone, there are hundreds of millions of people who are much shorter or much taller than average.
lallysingh 5mo ago
I use AI regularly to consider new looks. Just have it render someone like me in different outfits. Super useful.
- adrianwaj 5mo ago
  Sounds interesting.. can that be done easily?
nradov 5mo ago
There have been several startups focused on helping consumers find clothes that fit properly due to lack of consistent sizing between brands (or dress size "inflation" for women). Some of these used optical or laser scanners, or asked consumers to measure themselves. I think they're all dead or on life support now, but it still feels like there's a profitable business opportunity in there somewhere?
- plasma_beam 5mo ago
  Big issue that also seems to unfortunately be more and more common is variations in sizing within the same brand and article of clothing! Different batches with minor variations of the same exact size, or sizes changing over time. Love the idea but difficult problem to fix.
- jbjbjbjb 5mo ago
  I don’t think there is. People who care will go out and try the clothes on in the fitting room or just order online and return. That’s a much nicer experience and more foolproof.
- com2kid 5mo ago
  There are multiple Thai tailors that fly around to major US cities. They'll take your measurements, and then sit down and design a bunch of custom clothes for you. Quality is amazing, fit is incredible, and the price is only 20-30% more than off the rack, but the clothes can last a decade+. Sometimes the ancient solution (meet another person with a measuring tape) is the best one.
  - avarun 5mo ago
    Link?
    - mikepurvis 5mo ago
      For dress clothes at least, Maxwell's is great. I have some of their shirts and a jacket and they all fit and feel great. They do tours and measure you in a hotel conference room: https://www.maxwellsclothiers.com/ https://www.maxwellsclothiers.com/
Thanemate 5mo ago
I use chatGPT to track my nutrition goals, and adjust exercises. I also let it code review my personal projects to (at worst) gain exposure to new patterns. I wouldn't buy a deeply-ingrained AI laptop even if you paid me, and even then I'd install Linux on it in a heartbeat.
BeratnaGas 5mo ago
Researched men's sneakers last night. Super conflicting TMI for my odd size so going to a store for human sizing and gait evaluation. Info on durability was complete garbage. Suspicious about tuning for favored brands but AI recommended shoes will have the edge in my purchase decision since I've done some research.
pxtail 5mo ago
Yes, you used it but in a way not even remotely close to how they envision you should use it.
mrandish 5mo ago
Your valid use case doesn't contradict the point that so far most consumer-focused "AI features" are rarely useful and often just get in the way. I'm pretty sure a specific "AI Shopping Feature" wouldn't actually do what you're already doing, or if it did, it would add more steps/distractions than you have now. Just asking a web search / browser-enabled chatbot, as you are now, is already close to the optimally efficient tool for you. Unfortunately, aggregating results from many disparate retailers into one seller-neutral page filtered down to what you uniquely need today is no longer considered optimally efficient by most web retailers. Just like they erected barriers to stop being indexed by unaffiliated shopping aggregators, most large retailers will try to stop automatic aggregation of their current inventory (or lack thereof). Sadly, we're now in a post-enshittification world where Amazon's learned removing search features like requiring or excluding terms increases revenue and Google's learned giving you the search result you want first reduces ads served.
gambiting 5mo ago
I asked Gemini for help with something similar recently and it just made up a bunch of stores and items. When I pointed it out it said sorry and that it won't do it again. Then it did it again.
- kilna 5mo ago
  It's called Gemini because there's two of them responding to you. One that tells the lie, and the other to apologize for telling the lie (which, of course, is just a different lie).
mikepurvis 5mo ago
Hilariously I've done something similar for the same reason. Medium shirts/sweaters are generally too short on me but large sizes feel baggy. I only travel occasionally to the US for work, so last trip I had ChatGPU look at several US-based retailers (eg Land's End, LL Bean, American Tall) to see if there was stuff in stock I might want to have shipped to my office/hotel.
- mysterydip 5mo ago
  Just curious, did you check the stores’ sites afterwards for false positives or negatives? eg, “no this store doesn’t have anything for you” but it did?
  - mikepurvis 5mo ago
    Yes it was a mix of LLM and manual searching.
bsimpson 5mo ago
A good friend of mine has the opposite problem. I'm 5'11" (180cm) with a slender frame and long arms. A small Patagonia jacket fits me great. My friend is probably 5" shorter than me. A small on him would be too long. So he's always on the hunt for things that fit him properly in both dimensions.
- wvh 5mo ago
  It used to be so local (regional) brands had sizes adapted to their demographics. There used to be a thing like Italian, French, German, Scandinavian, etc sizing. I guess for global brands like Patagonia it's going to be challenging to fit everybody into the same – let's say – "M" size.
foobarian 5mo ago
Heh when I came to this country I was overjoyed to see that they had a "Big & Tall" store. Until I realized they actually meant the conjunction there...
happymellon 5mo ago
But I did this with Google before the LLMs
guelo 5mo ago
AI is good for shopping today because all other platforms are fully enshitified but AI is still in the pre-enshitification phase. It will be infested with ads soon enough. Enjoy it while you can.
brailsafe 5mo ago
What were your results? I'm nearly the exact same height with a shorter torso than leg length but super long arms, so I tend to need a medium tall, 36" inseam pants.
ccppurcell 5mo ago
I'm a similar build and I could imagine using ai for this purpose but come on. 194cm is like top 1% of human height. It's not a solid business model.
jaan 5mo ago
Wow, I’m in the same boat - do you mind sharing more about how you did it? I was thinking about that too (I’m 197cm) and would love to learn!
kranke155 5mo ago
Hacker News demographics isn’t real!
kimos 5mo ago
My brother in size Small-Tall, tell me where you shop! This is a good one: https://tallslimtees.com/ https://tallslimtees.com/ I also do some made to order from Son of a Tailor and Proper Cloth, but it’s expensive and laborious and slow and risky.
- overgard 5mo ago
  Dunno if it's the best brand in terms of bang for your buck, but I've bought a lot of shirts from "Have it Tall" on amazon and I have zero complaints about the fit. 6'4" and a pretty average build.
overgard 5mo ago
I mean, same on the struggle as a tall person, but doing that kind of research is pretty easy even without AI. Just find a couple brands that fit and some shops that sell them and you're pretty much set. I buy almost all my t-shirts from a specific company for tall people now, that I found on amazon by typing in something like "tall t-shirts"
adrianwaj 5mo ago
Imagine you could take a few photos of yourself and a system would find your real-life doppelgangers around the world. Then see what they wear and easily copy them. They get a commission. Or have shopping items be shown on your twin in a simulated fashion shoot on a doppelganger simulation. It should also show movement, situations and vibes. "Turning Doug Quaid back into Carl Hauser"
- dombiscoff 5mo ago
  This sounds like a terrible idea. Why not just have a simulated fashion shoot of yourself rather than requiring a database of the entire populations likeness to find your doppelganger? Very dystopian
  - adrianwaj 5mo ago
    I mentioned a "simulated fashion shoot" .. maybe after you posted the initial comment? Yet on the other hand, I've got a very extensive page of me wearing and using a bunch of different things. (see link in bio) It'd be interesting(?) to have a hundred(?) fans(?) wear what I wear. Some may be my size, most wouldn't be. I don't know how this world would end up. I presume it's about building a sort of "icon kingdom" or mob of Mr. Andersons. It may be utopian if you find the right community. It's not just about size and fit, but what people may be looking for is vibe, community and vision. The interplay between fashion and sub-culture is not always so clear. People may want belonging and community, but will that sacrifice individuality and freedom-of-thought? Would you rebel until anarchy or to improvement? What's the focus and vision of your life? Times by 1000 and you're impacting the world through a prayer-like scenario.
hypercube33 5mo ago
I feel the real problem is poor standardized sizing for clothing in store and worse online. I swear every store has their own unique sizes and when it comes to no names on sites like Amazon it's just pure good luck. As far as this laptop is concerned I feel like it's a repeat of that super expensive chrome book that fizzled out because it was basically nerfed by Google unshockingly. As one of the top posters here if they delivered quality hardware, good Linux and solid Google support and even gapps, this would be an absolute win. instead i can only guess what this is unless I missed any real information on the site it's just a metal Chromebook with extra AI?
dzhiurgis 5mo ago
> I used AI to scrape a bunch of clothing stores I wonder if for the next period websites will really try hard to prevent scraping (already happening, in some industries very pervasive, i.e. its impossible to get accurate quote for power) until they realize they can sell much more to people using agents. Or everything just going to race to the bottom like a manufacturer or distributor since it's so easy to find everything anything you need. Kinda already happening with saas companies loosing value while infrastructure is soaring.
buu700 5mo ago
I recently used AI to shop for clothes. A T-shirt I liked and wanted more of had doubled in price due to tariffs, while some shorts that needed replacement had been discontinued. AI helped identify alternatives with comparable fit and fabric that were respectively domestic and available, which would have been a much bigger hassle pre-AI.
- nainachirps_ 5mo ago
  What did you use a s what was the procedure. I want to find pants similar to ones i got.
  - buu700 5mo ago
    For the T-shirt I used both Grok and Gemini Deep Research. I basically just told them I was looking for an alternative to the Asket Lightweight T-Shirt that was more in line with its 2022 pricing of $50 (already on the high end of what I was willing to pay). They both called out that the defining features were Supima cotton and 120gsm density, and each independently recommended the Buck Mason Classic Pima Tee (with the only notable differences on paper being a slightly thicker 140gsm and anecdotal reports of inconsistent sizing). They each gave a few backup recs, but those were mostly not available or less aligned with requirements, so I just went for the BM and it met expectations. For the shorts I used only Grok. Explained that I was looking for a similar fit and poly/elastane blend to an old Under Armour pair. Initially it incorrectly claimed that the same shorts were still for sale. Went back and forth with it surfacing a few options that weren't relevant and hallucinating specific claimed comparisons to the original pair in reviews that didn't actually exist. Ultimately it landed on another UA pair that was identical on paper other than a much larger stylized logo, and a cheaper one from a brand interestingly called "DEVOPS". Went with the latter and it turned out to be pretty much the same as the old pair, or at least as close as it seems I'm likely to find without a giant ad plastered on the side.
- smokel 5mo ago
  Did it find Girav [1]? [1] https://www.girav.com/ https://www.girav.com/
nainachirps_ 5mo ago
Hi. What AI and procedure did you use for this? I am also looking for good formal clothes that fit my broad shoulders but narrow waist than typical mass market clothes shoot for
clktmr 5mo ago
This just shows how bad search engines have become. About 15 years ago you could type fully worded questions into Google and would be pointed to the exact sentence of a website that answers your question. I happened so slowly, we were all frogs in boiling water. An the same will happen to AI. We will remember these days as the golden age for AI, where you weren't required to prompt an AI three times before it answers with a non-ad response.
- joe_the_user 5mo ago
  You're right but I think AIs can be better than Google at it's height. But whether it's search or AI-chat, what's annoying is efforts to have it replace that things that exist rather than serving as useful addition. I use ChatGPT X many times a day (or hour) but unless I ask for an AI's opinion, I don't want it.
- teekert 5mo ago
  The “nice” thing with AI is that the nudging can be so subtle you don’t even realize you’re being influenced for money.
  - ethbr1 5mo ago
    What people think commercial AI is: a friend What it actually is: a salesperson It took the mass public a long time (15 years?) to realize search engines had shifted from the former to the latter, and that allowed Google to leverage that misplaced trust into huge profits. Expect commercial AI to be the same, unless it's explicitly set up otherwise (read: Kagi assistant).
    - bayindirh 5mo ago
      Google is the first company which developed, demonstrated and earned an award for inserting advertisements in AI generated text. It even supports bidding for the ad space! Source: https://research.google/blog/mechanism-design-for-large-language-models/ https://research.google/blog/mechanism-design-for-large-lang...
    - 5mo ago
remix2000 5mo ago
You scrape sites, okay, but what's "ai" got to do with that (I assume ai means chat bots in this context?) I'm genuinely curious, whatever you're doing sounds cool, but more details beyond the buzzword pitch you'd tell your manager would be welcome on a hard technical site like hn? (ftr, I'm skeptical of all applications of machine learning, but I keep experimenting with all the various kinds of it, generally with no good result; last real-world useful [to any extent] ml model I tried was BASnet, but whatever you tinkered out sounds cool and if it actually scrapes and filters clothes the way you describe, that'd be quite cool [perhaps even product worthy…?], cuz there are way too many clothes online to look at all of them manually and then esp. on fast fashion sites, there are oftentimes reviews you want to be wary for that indicate low quality products… anyway, that just sounds impossible to automate in my experience, but feel free to prove otherwise)
- lucas_t_a 5mo ago
  good luck scrapping very specific information in a bunch of dynamic websites before AI.
  - remix2000 5mo ago
    Okay but then 'AI' is just a noise generator when it comes to very specific information… I mean just try asking any chat bot to search for something like specific photography gear for some specific scenario and in my experience it's just as good as simply picking some random stuff, except the chat bot will also gaslight you into thinking you made the right choices, so you don't question them… :/
- arghwhat 5mo ago
  What "ai" got to do with that would be that he didn't write a scraper and a clothing style ("vibe") categorizer to build a database to process entries in to pick a shop. They just prompted the "ai" (I really don't know why you're putting that in quotes), and it in turn did that for them. Was it a technically impressive effort from the prompter? No. Are the tools created in the session somehow a massive technical achievement? No. But was it a very useful result? Yes. It took the kind of task that would likely never get done otherwise, and turned it into the kind of thing that got done on a whim. Doesn't mean that your laptop needs "AI buttons" though.
egorfine 5mo ago
You realize that if anything, this way of using AI for shopping is something corporate would rather hate? By using AI to filter out results, you don't see ads, upsells, other products, recommendations, reviews, dark patterns, etc.
ookblah 5mo ago
[dead]

adrithmetiqa 5mo ago

I’m sorry but I’m not buying this argument. This problem was solved in 2005 with search engines.

talldan 5mo ago
Search engines are good for finding shops, but not individual items. There also aren't many shops that are dedicated to only tall, usually big and tall instead. I don't know how good AI is at these kinds of tasks, but I can tell you that it's not easy manually, especially in some parts of the world where you might have to factor in shipping/return costs.

SeanAnderson 5mo ago

Did it work? Did you buy something?

robbie-c 5mo ago
Undecided. One of the sites didn't have an LT but the LLM flagged that chest dimensions on their large were narrower than others, so could be worth trying.
- OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
  That you didn't just search for "Big and Tall" or some-such tells me the search engines aren't as decent as I might think. Are search engines really that useless? Or did you start with a search for "clothes, tall" and then use AI to scrape the hits to find more details?
  - robbie-c 5mo ago
    I did that first, which didn't work for a couple of reasons. Many "big and tall" stores are the intersection only, and many of the stores didn't quite have the right vibe. I do have some of my wardrobe from places like 2tall.com but I was looking for something very silly for an in-joke for a friends vacation.

etchalon 5mo ago

As 204cm human, I have also built a thing to scrape all the major brands for LT sizes. It is deeply annoying we have to do this.

bigfudge 5mo ago
Can you share it?! Will save me the trouble …
duzer65657 5mo ago
6'4" with relatively proportionate body-parts: buy the tall/long and you're likely good. At your height, all bets are off!
- etchalon 5mo ago
  At my height, I have to do custom on a lot of things, though LT sizes can work for some pieces (short sleeves anything, some long sleeve items if the cut is intended to have longer sleeves). It's a frustrating existence.

Jzush 5mo ago

Yeah, that’s how AI should be used. If the ad was using AI as a tool to solve a real problem then I’d be down. But that’s not what this is. This is AI as a shopping cart, or a thing to organize the busy life of a casually rich person who flies to Japan to buy vintage clothes. Basically I’m only saying the ad is wildly out of touch with reality.

MiSeRyDeee 5mo ago
What made you believe it is not someone else's real problem? You're simply not targeted audience of the ads
- skywhopper 5mo ago
  It’s not enough people's problem to make it worth building a mass market advertising campaign around it.
  - starkparker 5mo ago
    even for advertising it's not even a problem to aspire toward having
- loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
  [flagged]

evan_ 5mo ago

This is kinda the exception that proves the rule. I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience, but I will bet you anything that any searches you try to do will lead you to the same half-dozen giant mail-order clothing vendors that everyone already knows about.

dadrock 5mo ago
I will do my best to remember your opinion next time I use AI to buy clothes, but given the fact that IDGAF, it's not going to be easy.
borski 5mo ago
Great ideas always start with a niche. Moreover, they almost always start out looking dumb.
- spectralseq 5mo ago
  and therefore, ideas that seem dumb and niche must be great
- intended 5mo ago
  The example was of someone who is tall and doesn’t find clothes that fit them. For the average consumer, clothes fit them. There is no generalizability from a niche possible here, since the mass market is already served.
  - nilkn 5mo ago
    Actually, I think you're really underestimating how many people struggle to find clothes that fit them well. Most people's bodies are not perfectly average. For clothes not to fit well, you don't need to be a significant outlier in one dimension. Just the accumulation of several smaller deviations from average can be enough to create an awkward fit. Beyond that, even if we limit it to height alone, there are hundreds of millions of people who are much shorter or much taller than average.

lallysingh 5mo ago

I use AI regularly to consider new looks. Just have it render someone like me in different outfits. Super useful.

adrianwaj 5mo ago
Sounds interesting.. can that be done easily?

nradov 5mo ago

There have been several startups focused on helping consumers find clothes that fit properly due to lack of consistent sizing between brands (or dress size "inflation" for women). Some of these used optical or laser scanners, or asked consumers to measure themselves. I think they're all dead or on life support now, but it still feels like there's a profitable business opportunity in there somewhere?

plasma_beam 5mo ago
Big issue that also seems to unfortunately be more and more common is variations in sizing within the same brand and article of clothing! Different batches with minor variations of the same exact size, or sizes changing over time. Love the idea but difficult problem to fix.
jbjbjbjb 5mo ago
I don’t think there is. People who care will go out and try the clothes on in the fitting room or just order online and return. That’s a much nicer experience and more foolproof.
com2kid 5mo ago
There are multiple Thai tailors that fly around to major US cities. They'll take your measurements, and then sit down and design a bunch of custom clothes for you. Quality is amazing, fit is incredible, and the price is only 20-30% more than off the rack, but the clothes can last a decade+. Sometimes the ancient solution (meet another person with a measuring tape) is the best one.
- avarun 5mo ago
  Link?
  - mikepurvis 5mo ago
    For dress clothes at least, Maxwell's is great. I have some of their shirts and a jacket and they all fit and feel great. They do tours and measure you in a hotel conference room: https://www.maxwellsclothiers.com/ https://www.maxwellsclothiers.com/

Thanemate 5mo ago

I use chatGPT to track my nutrition goals, and adjust exercises. I also let it code review my personal projects to (at worst) gain exposure to new patterns. I wouldn't buy a deeply-ingrained AI laptop even if you paid me, and even then I'd install Linux on it in a heartbeat.

BeratnaGas 5mo ago

Researched men's sneakers last night. Super conflicting TMI for my odd size so going to a store for human sizing and gait evaluation. Info on durability was complete garbage. Suspicious about tuning for favored brands but AI recommended shoes will have the edge in my purchase decision since I've done some research.

pxtail 5mo ago

Yes, you used it but in a way not even remotely close to how they envision you should use it.

mrandish 5mo ago

Your valid use case doesn't contradict the point that so far most consumer-focused "AI features" are rarely useful and often just get in the way. I'm pretty sure a specific "AI Shopping Feature" wouldn't actually do what you're already doing, or if it did, it would add more steps/distractions than you have now. Just asking a web search / browser-enabled chatbot, as you are now, is already close to the optimally efficient tool for you. Unfortunately, aggregating results from many disparate retailers into one seller-neutral page filtered down to what you uniquely need today is no longer considered optimally efficient by most web retailers. Just like they erected barriers to stop being indexed by unaffiliated shopping aggregators, most large retailers will try to stop automatic aggregation of their current inventory (or lack thereof). Sadly, we're now in a post-enshittification world where Amazon's learned removing search features like requiring or excluding terms increases revenue and Google's learned giving you the search result you want first reduces ads served.

gambiting 5mo ago

I asked Gemini for help with something similar recently and it just made up a bunch of stores and items. When I pointed it out it said sorry and that it won't do it again. Then it did it again.

kilna 5mo ago
It's called Gemini because there's two of them responding to you. One that tells the lie, and the other to apologize for telling the lie (which, of course, is just a different lie).

mikepurvis 5mo ago

Hilariously I've done something similar for the same reason. Medium shirts/sweaters are generally too short on me but large sizes feel baggy. I only travel occasionally to the US for work, so last trip I had ChatGPU look at several US-based retailers (eg Land's End, LL Bean, American Tall) to see if there was stuff in stock I might want to have shipped to my office/hotel.

mysterydip 5mo ago
Just curious, did you check the stores’ sites afterwards for false positives or negatives? eg, “no this store doesn’t have anything for you” but it did?
- mikepurvis 5mo ago
  Yes it was a mix of LLM and manual searching.

bsimpson 5mo ago

A good friend of mine has the opposite problem. I'm 5'11" (180cm) with a slender frame and long arms. A small Patagonia jacket fits me great. My friend is probably 5" shorter than me. A small on him would be too long. So he's always on the hunt for things that fit him properly in both dimensions.

wvh 5mo ago
It used to be so local (regional) brands had sizes adapted to their demographics. There used to be a thing like Italian, French, German, Scandinavian, etc sizing. I guess for global brands like Patagonia it's going to be challenging to fit everybody into the same – let's say – "M" size.

foobarian 5mo ago

Heh when I came to this country I was overjoyed to see that they had a "Big & Tall" store. Until I realized they actually meant the conjunction there...

happymellon 5mo ago

But I did this with Google before the LLMs

guelo 5mo ago

AI is good for shopping today because all other platforms are fully enshitified but AI is still in the pre-enshitification phase. It will be infested with ads soon enough. Enjoy it while you can.

brailsafe 5mo ago

What were your results? I'm nearly the exact same height with a shorter torso than leg length but super long arms, so I tend to need a medium tall, 36" inseam pants.

ccppurcell 5mo ago

I'm a similar build and I could imagine using ai for this purpose but come on. 194cm is like top 1% of human height. It's not a solid business model.

jaan 5mo ago

Wow, I’m in the same boat - do you mind sharing more about how you did it? I was thinking about that too (I’m 197cm) and would love to learn!

kranke155 5mo ago

Hacker News demographics isn’t real!

kimos 5mo ago

My brother in size Small-Tall, tell me where you shop! This is a good one: https://tallslimtees.com/ https://tallslimtees.com/ I also do some made to order from Son of a Tailor and Proper Cloth, but it’s expensive and laborious and slow and risky.

overgard 5mo ago
Dunno if it's the best brand in terms of bang for your buck, but I've bought a lot of shirts from "Have it Tall" on amazon and I have zero complaints about the fit. 6'4" and a pretty average build.

overgard 5mo ago

I mean, same on the struggle as a tall person, but doing that kind of research is pretty easy even without AI. Just find a couple brands that fit and some shops that sell them and you're pretty much set. I buy almost all my t-shirts from a specific company for tall people now, that I found on amazon by typing in something like "tall t-shirts"

adrianwaj 5mo ago

Imagine you could take a few photos of yourself and a system would find your real-life doppelgangers around the world. Then see what they wear and easily copy them. They get a commission. Or have shopping items be shown on your twin in a simulated fashion shoot on a doppelganger simulation. It should also show movement, situations and vibes. "Turning Doug Quaid back into Carl Hauser"

dombiscoff 5mo ago
This sounds like a terrible idea. Why not just have a simulated fashion shoot of yourself rather than requiring a database of the entire populations likeness to find your doppelganger? Very dystopian
- adrianwaj 5mo ago
  I mentioned a "simulated fashion shoot" .. maybe after you posted the initial comment? Yet on the other hand, I've got a very extensive page of me wearing and using a bunch of different things. (see link in bio) It'd be interesting(?) to have a hundred(?) fans(?) wear what I wear. Some may be my size, most wouldn't be. I don't know how this world would end up. I presume it's about building a sort of "icon kingdom" or mob of Mr. Andersons. It may be utopian if you find the right community. It's not just about size and fit, but what people may be looking for is vibe, community and vision. The interplay between fashion and sub-culture is not always so clear. People may want belonging and community, but will that sacrifice individuality and freedom-of-thought? Would you rebel until anarchy or to improvement? What's the focus and vision of your life? Times by 1000 and you're impacting the world through a prayer-like scenario.

hypercube33 5mo ago

I feel the real problem is poor standardized sizing for clothing in store and worse online. I swear every store has their own unique sizes and when it comes to no names on sites like Amazon it's just pure good luck. As far as this laptop is concerned I feel like it's a repeat of that super expensive chrome book that fizzled out because it was basically nerfed by Google unshockingly. As one of the top posters here if they delivered quality hardware, good Linux and solid Google support and even gapps, this would be an absolute win. instead i can only guess what this is unless I missed any real information on the site it's just a metal Chromebook with extra AI?

dzhiurgis 5mo ago

> I used AI to scrape a bunch of clothing stores I wonder if for the next period websites will really try hard to prevent scraping (already happening, in some industries very pervasive, i.e. its impossible to get accurate quote for power) until they realize they can sell much more to people using agents. Or everything just going to race to the bottom like a manufacturer or distributor since it's so easy to find everything anything you need. Kinda already happening with saas companies loosing value while infrastructure is soaring.

buu700 5mo ago

I recently used AI to shop for clothes. A T-shirt I liked and wanted more of had doubled in price due to tariffs, while some shorts that needed replacement had been discontinued. AI helped identify alternatives with comparable fit and fabric that were respectively domestic and available, which would have been a much bigger hassle pre-AI.

nainachirps_ 5mo ago
What did you use a s what was the procedure. I want to find pants similar to ones i got.
- buu700 5mo ago
  For the T-shirt I used both Grok and Gemini Deep Research. I basically just told them I was looking for an alternative to the Asket Lightweight T-Shirt that was more in line with its 2022 pricing of $50 (already on the high end of what I was willing to pay). They both called out that the defining features were Supima cotton and 120gsm density, and each independently recommended the Buck Mason Classic Pima Tee (with the only notable differences on paper being a slightly thicker 140gsm and anecdotal reports of inconsistent sizing). They each gave a few backup recs, but those were mostly not available or less aligned with requirements, so I just went for the BM and it met expectations. For the shorts I used only Grok. Explained that I was looking for a similar fit and poly/elastane blend to an old Under Armour pair. Initially it incorrectly claimed that the same shorts were still for sale. Went back and forth with it surfacing a few options that weren't relevant and hallucinating specific claimed comparisons to the original pair in reviews that didn't actually exist. Ultimately it landed on another UA pair that was identical on paper other than a much larger stylized logo, and a cheaper one from a brand interestingly called "DEVOPS". Went with the latter and it turned out to be pretty much the same as the old pair, or at least as close as it seems I'm likely to find without a giant ad plastered on the side.
smokel 5mo ago
Did it find Girav [1]? [1] https://www.girav.com/ https://www.girav.com/

nainachirps_ 5mo ago

Hi. What AI and procedure did you use for this? I am also looking for good formal clothes that fit my broad shoulders but narrow waist than typical mass market clothes shoot for

clktmr 5mo ago

This just shows how bad search engines have become. About 15 years ago you could type fully worded questions into Google and would be pointed to the exact sentence of a website that answers your question. I happened so slowly, we were all frogs in boiling water. An the same will happen to AI. We will remember these days as the golden age for AI, where you weren't required to prompt an AI three times before it answers with a non-ad response.

joe_the_user 5mo ago
You're right but I think AIs can be better than Google at it's height. But whether it's search or AI-chat, what's annoying is efforts to have it replace that things that exist rather than serving as useful addition. I use ChatGPT X many times a day (or hour) but unless I ask for an AI's opinion, I don't want it.
teekert 5mo ago
The “nice” thing with AI is that the nudging can be so subtle you don’t even realize you’re being influenced for money.
- ethbr1 5mo ago
  What people think commercial AI is: a friend What it actually is: a salesperson It took the mass public a long time (15 years?) to realize search engines had shifted from the former to the latter, and that allowed Google to leverage that misplaced trust into huge profits. Expect commercial AI to be the same, unless it's explicitly set up otherwise (read: Kagi assistant).
  - bayindirh 5mo ago
    Google is the first company which developed, demonstrated and earned an award for inserting advertisements in AI generated text. It even supports bidding for the ad space! Source: https://research.google/blog/mechanism-design-for-large-language-models/ https://research.google/blog/mechanism-design-for-large-lang...
  - 5mo ago

remix2000 5mo ago

You scrape sites, okay, but what's "ai" got to do with that (I assume ai means chat bots in this context?) I'm genuinely curious, whatever you're doing sounds cool, but more details beyond the buzzword pitch you'd tell your manager would be welcome on a hard technical site like hn? (ftr, I'm skeptical of all applications of machine learning, but I keep experimenting with all the various kinds of it, generally with no good result; last real-world useful [to any extent] ml model I tried was BASnet, but whatever you tinkered out sounds cool and if it actually scrapes and filters clothes the way you describe, that'd be quite cool [perhaps even product worthy…?], cuz there are way too many clothes online to look at all of them manually and then esp. on fast fashion sites, there are oftentimes reviews you want to be wary for that indicate low quality products… anyway, that just sounds impossible to automate in my experience, but feel free to prove otherwise)

lucas_t_a 5mo ago
good luck scrapping very specific information in a bunch of dynamic websites before AI.
- remix2000 5mo ago
  Okay but then 'AI' is just a noise generator when it comes to very specific information… I mean just try asking any chat bot to search for something like specific photography gear for some specific scenario and in my experience it's just as good as simply picking some random stuff, except the chat bot will also gaslight you into thinking you made the right choices, so you don't question them… :/
arghwhat 5mo ago
What "ai" got to do with that would be that he didn't write a scraper and a clothing style ("vibe") categorizer to build a database to process entries in to pick a shop. They just prompted the "ai" (I really don't know why you're putting that in quotes), and it in turn did that for them. Was it a technically impressive effort from the prompter? No. Are the tools created in the session somehow a massive technical achievement? No. But was it a very useful result? Yes. It took the kind of task that would likely never get done otherwise, and turned it into the kind of thing that got done on a whim. Doesn't mean that your laptop needs "AI buttons" though.

egorfine 5mo ago

You realize that if anything, this way of using AI for shopping is something corporate would rather hate? By using AI to filter out results, you don't see ads, upsells, other products, recommendations, reviews, dark patterns, etc.

ookblah 5mo ago

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