Other models like PGMs can absolutely be applied to ImageNet, just not for SOTA accuracy.

It's that entirely accurate though? There's all kinds of explicit dimensionally reduction methods. They can be combined with traditional ml models pretty easily for supervised learning. As I understand, the unique thing DL gives us just a massive embedding that can encode/"represent" something like language or vision.

Seriously, accessibility technology is huge at MSFT and there are teams all over the place working on stuff, both MSR and applications inside product teams. Disclaimer: I work there.

Hand made doesn't mean hand knotted and Etsy can lie. Also, they might use synthetic materials.