6 ms·

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” e

by 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.
    - rblatz 5mo ago
      The US Air Force learned this in the 50's. They built a cockpit based on the average body dimensions of pilots, what they ended up with is 0 pilots that were average and a cockpit that poorly fit everyone.
  - rgmerk 5mo ago
    I can assure you having observed the process of clothes shopping for the women in my life, that as far as they are concerned, clothes do not just “fit them”.
  - marcus_holmes 5mo ago
    Yeah there was no way Amazon could expand from its niche of specialist books to anything else, because that market was already served. Oh, wait...
stickfigure 5mo ago
That's fine? Especially if the AI does the searches for me, and does them more frequently than I would. I have a half dozen facebook marketplace searches going. I used to automate craigslist searches before craigslist became irrelevant. It's nothing complicated but "AI searches for me and notifies me" is better than me remembering to look.
anonymars 5mo ago
> exception that proves the rule That's not how that works; "someone is doing this" doesn't prove a rule "no one is doing this" -- quite the opposite "The exception that proves the rule" is for things like "closed Thursdays" (rule = open on other days), "no parking after 8 PM" (rule = parking allowed before 8 PM), "no refunds on games" (rule = refunds available on other items), etc.
- OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
  You're confusing "The Exception That Proves the Rule" (in English, as used colloquially) with "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" (in Latin, which has a use similar to what you're describing.) While the law attempts to be precise, common usage embraces ambiguity.
  - dctoedt 5mo ago
    > exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis Or more succinctly, as first-year law students learn: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius — to state one thing is to implicitly exclude others. https://definitions.lsd.law/expressio-unius-est-exclusio-alterius https://definitions.lsd.law/expressio-unius-est-exclusio-alt...
    - emmelaich 5mo ago
      RIP modus ponens!
  - dboreham 5mo ago
    They really mean the same. What changed was the meaning of the word "proves" in English. When the saying was coined it meant "tests", not "confirms". People kept saying the...saying even though they were using it backwards.
    - girvo 5mo ago
      Which is amusing because “proving grounds” is still using the old definition of “proves” :)
harrall 5mo ago
Uhh I don’t think you shop for clothes if you think there’s just a half dozen giant mail order clothing vendors. Well obviously you shop for clothes, but nowhere like the way people who like clothes shop for clothes. Finding clothes is about matching the vision in your head. If you’re the type that just buy clothes whatever, this is not a problem that exists in your world.
- evan_ 5mo ago
  This is exactly what I'm talking about though. There are lots of places to buy clothes, but if the AI product is just going to be influenced by ad spend, you'll always get sent to the same handful of places.
com2kid 5mo ago
ChatGPT has helped me find multiple niche products and vendors. It is really good at that. Products I fruitlessly tried to find for years, ChatGPT found right away. > I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience, That is kind of the idea of serving the long tail. Everyone is unique, and there are a lot of everyones. That said, I don't get online clothes shopping. The fit is 80% of the product.
- jrflowers 5mo ago
  >That is kind of the idea of serving the long tail. I feel like I see a brand new way of saying “something that people don’t really want” on a near daily basis nowadays
  - tyg13 5mo ago
    No, you don't understand. We're... - mining the 95th percentile, leveraging the Pareto Principle - optimizing and ubiquitizing under-optimized paradigms - pioneering agentic solutions to aggressively expand product frontiers - innovating high-risk strategies to serve underserved markets - digging deep into the inner recesses of my being and extracting what's left of my soul through my nostrils And so much more.
    - fn-mote 5mo ago
      You and the parent are dismissing an actual customer who really used the “AI” successfully. I don’t want to believe LLMs are the future of shopping either, but it’s wrong to dismiss actual successful users with hot air.
      - matwood 5mo ago
        Yeah, people are letting their biases get in the way of seeing the reality.
  - com2kid 5mo ago
    It means Google will show you the top 5 brands for a product category and then give up. If you want something more specific you have to search through reddit threads. Or you can have chatgpt search through reddit threads for you.
jefftk 5mo ago
I also did a bunch of shopping with AI to identify clothing recently. I was going to DC for a bunch of meetings, and did not have a good sense of what clothes are appropriate in different DC contexts. I did a bunch of iteration with AI to identify something that communicated what I intended, and then ran the final list by a friend with more context to confirm that it was indeed a readable choice.
youre-wrong3 5mo ago
It’s not an exception. People seem very short sighted when it comes to AI. Unable to think outside the box for how AI can be helpful or useful.
- stingraycharles 5mo ago
  Yeah, I use AI for this stuff all the time. Found a visa agency, accountant, great cafes to be working, etc just in the past week. Also sometimes when doing more complicated purchases that require multiple products, I use it to sift through Amazon. Especially ChatGPT seems to be optimizing for this use case, like a “search engine that can actually reason” (by lack of a better description). It’s convenient, and saves me a lot of time compared to the mess that Google has become. (Obviously it’s likely this will happen to AI as well in the future, but right now, it’s pretty good)
  - da_chicken 5mo ago
    How many of the things you've listed here are $20/month better than a search engine? That's the actual deal here. Obviously, a better search engine that also doesn't display ads is better. But is it $20/month better? When it's also got daily usage limits? And they're almost certain to start injecting ads as soon as they possibly can without alienating people?
    - stingraycharles 5mo ago
      I’m already paying for it, this is just one of the many ways I’m using it. Your phone and internet connections also have usage limits, and you’re also using them in various ways. I agree that it’s extremely likely that, especially post-IPO, monetization will kill the current user experience, which I already hinted at in my previous comment.
      - dghlsakjg 5mo ago
        I’m not entirely convinced that they will be able to monetize that effectively with ads. Right now I can buy more chat than I can use in a month for $10 in API credits via commodity open model providers. Given the growing distrust of ad supported tech, I could see AI remaining as a paid product.
subscribed 5mo ago
Just in the last three weeks I cut buying an used car analysis (1-3 months usually) and a new dryer (usually at least a week) to three days total -- this is "time to shortlist" aka "any of the three remaining options will be a great choice". Using several AI models to cut through the multidimensional sea of options. It's not all grim, thia technology can genuinely be helpful.
yonaguska 5mo ago
AI helped me shop for some bits and tools that I needed to do my rear differential and brake fluid, and after some nudging, I also got it to do price comparisons for the tools I needed. saved me a lot of time to walk into each store with an exact list on the bits that I needed. And time with getting exactly the tool I needed without overspending. I previously would have spent this time opening up 4 tabs on three diff hardware store sites, and an additional tab to pull up the relevant car forums for tips and advice. Which I ended up doing anyways, as well as some YouTube videos because I don't trust the results. But it still saved me a ton of time investigating and weighing out options as a decent aggregator of info.
newswasboring 5mo ago
> I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs You know, everyone used to have specific needs in clothing when I was young. Somehow fast fashion advertised that out of us to solve their own supply chain problems.
deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]

by evan_ 5mo ago

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.
  - rblatz 5mo ago
    The US Air Force learned this in the 50's. They built a cockpit based on the average body dimensions of pilots, what they ended up with is 0 pilots that were average and a cockpit that poorly fit everyone.
- rgmerk 5mo ago
  I can assure you having observed the process of clothes shopping for the women in my life, that as far as they are concerned, clothes do not just “fit them”.
- marcus_holmes 5mo ago
  Yeah there was no way Amazon could expand from its niche of specialist books to anything else, because that market was already served. Oh, wait...

stickfigure 5mo ago

That's fine? Especially if the AI does the searches for me, and does them more frequently than I would. I have a half dozen facebook marketplace searches going. I used to automate craigslist searches before craigslist became irrelevant. It's nothing complicated but "AI searches for me and notifies me" is better than me remembering to look.

anonymars 5mo ago

> exception that proves the rule That's not how that works; "someone is doing this" doesn't prove a rule "no one is doing this" -- quite the opposite "The exception that proves the rule" is for things like "closed Thursdays" (rule = open on other days), "no parking after 8 PM" (rule = parking allowed before 8 PM), "no refunds on games" (rule = refunds available on other items), etc.

OhMeadhbh 5mo ago
You're confusing "The Exception That Proves the Rule" (in English, as used colloquially) with "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" (in Latin, which has a use similar to what you're describing.) While the law attempts to be precise, common usage embraces ambiguity.
- dctoedt 5mo ago
  > exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis Or more succinctly, as first-year law students learn: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius — to state one thing is to implicitly exclude others. https://definitions.lsd.law/expressio-unius-est-exclusio-alterius https://definitions.lsd.law/expressio-unius-est-exclusio-alt...
  - emmelaich 5mo ago
    RIP modus ponens!
- dboreham 5mo ago
  They really mean the same. What changed was the meaning of the word "proves" in English. When the saying was coined it meant "tests", not "confirms". People kept saying the...saying even though they were using it backwards.
  - girvo 5mo ago
    Which is amusing because “proving grounds” is still using the old definition of “proves” :)

harrall 5mo ago

Uhh I don’t think you shop for clothes if you think there’s just a half dozen giant mail order clothing vendors. Well obviously you shop for clothes, but nowhere like the way people who like clothes shop for clothes. Finding clothes is about matching the vision in your head. If you’re the type that just buy clothes whatever, this is not a problem that exists in your world.

evan_ 5mo ago
This is exactly what I'm talking about though. There are lots of places to buy clothes, but if the AI product is just going to be influenced by ad spend, you'll always get sent to the same handful of places.

com2kid 5mo ago

ChatGPT has helped me find multiple niche products and vendors. It is really good at that. Products I fruitlessly tried to find for years, ChatGPT found right away. > I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience, That is kind of the idea of serving the long tail. Everyone is unique, and there are a lot of everyones. That said, I don't get online clothes shopping. The fit is 80% of the product.

jrflowers 5mo ago
>That is kind of the idea of serving the long tail. I feel like I see a brand new way of saying “something that people don’t really want” on a near daily basis nowadays
- tyg13 5mo ago
  No, you don't understand. We're... - mining the 95th percentile, leveraging the Pareto Principle - optimizing and ubiquitizing under-optimized paradigms - pioneering agentic solutions to aggressively expand product frontiers - innovating high-risk strategies to serve underserved markets - digging deep into the inner recesses of my being and extracting what's left of my soul through my nostrils And so much more.
  - fn-mote 5mo ago
    You and the parent are dismissing an actual customer who really used the “AI” successfully. I don’t want to believe LLMs are the future of shopping either, but it’s wrong to dismiss actual successful users with hot air.
    - matwood 5mo ago
      Yeah, people are letting their biases get in the way of seeing the reality.
- com2kid 5mo ago
  It means Google will show you the top 5 brands for a product category and then give up. If you want something more specific you have to search through reddit threads. Or you can have chatgpt search through reddit threads for you.

jefftk 5mo ago

I also did a bunch of shopping with AI to identify clothing recently. I was going to DC for a bunch of meetings, and did not have a good sense of what clothes are appropriate in different DC contexts. I did a bunch of iteration with AI to identify something that communicated what I intended, and then ran the final list by a friend with more context to confirm that it was indeed a readable choice.

youre-wrong3 5mo ago

It’s not an exception. People seem very short sighted when it comes to AI. Unable to think outside the box for how AI can be helpful or useful.

stingraycharles 5mo ago
Yeah, I use AI for this stuff all the time. Found a visa agency, accountant, great cafes to be working, etc just in the past week. Also sometimes when doing more complicated purchases that require multiple products, I use it to sift through Amazon. Especially ChatGPT seems to be optimizing for this use case, like a “search engine that can actually reason” (by lack of a better description). It’s convenient, and saves me a lot of time compared to the mess that Google has become. (Obviously it’s likely this will happen to AI as well in the future, but right now, it’s pretty good)
- da_chicken 5mo ago
  How many of the things you've listed here are $20/month better than a search engine? That's the actual deal here. Obviously, a better search engine that also doesn't display ads is better. But is it $20/month better? When it's also got daily usage limits? And they're almost certain to start injecting ads as soon as they possibly can without alienating people?
  - stingraycharles 5mo ago
    I’m already paying for it, this is just one of the many ways I’m using it. Your phone and internet connections also have usage limits, and you’re also using them in various ways. I agree that it’s extremely likely that, especially post-IPO, monetization will kill the current user experience, which I already hinted at in my previous comment.
    - dghlsakjg 5mo ago
      I’m not entirely convinced that they will be able to monetize that effectively with ads. Right now I can buy more chat than I can use in a month for $10 in API credits via commodity open model providers. Given the growing distrust of ad supported tech, I could see AI remaining as a paid product.

subscribed 5mo ago

Just in the last three weeks I cut buying an used car analysis (1-3 months usually) and a new dryer (usually at least a week) to three days total -- this is "time to shortlist" aka "any of the three remaining options will be a great choice". Using several AI models to cut through the multidimensional sea of options. It's not all grim, thia technology can genuinely be helpful.

yonaguska 5mo ago

AI helped me shop for some bits and tools that I needed to do my rear differential and brake fluid, and after some nudging, I also got it to do price comparisons for the tools I needed. saved me a lot of time to walk into each store with an exact list on the bits that I needed. And time with getting exactly the tool I needed without overspending. I previously would have spent this time opening up 4 tabs on three diff hardware store sites, and an additional tab to pull up the relevant car forums for tips and advice. Which I ended up doing anyways, as well as some YouTube videos because I don't trust the results. But it still saved me a ton of time investigating and weighing out options as a decent aggregator of info.

newswasboring 5mo ago

> I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs You know, everyone used to have specific needs in clothing when I was young. Somehow fast fashion advertised that out of us to solve their own supply chain problems.

deleted 5mo ago

[deleted]