SBGrover posts a work in progress that shows skinning approximation generated through use of a Neural Network in Maya.

AI and neural networks have a vast promise in computer graphics workflows and will hopefully make tedious tasks a thing of the past. One such area might be skinning and skinning approximation. Check out this work in progress from SBGrover (Dave Pinkney) who shows off his skinning approximation tool that transfers an approximation of the complete rig and its deformations to a rigid bound mesh that has a basic skeleton.

The system uses the Maya Python API, Keras, and CNTK to predict deformations on skinned meshes using Machine Learning. The neural network tool in Maya is based on the paper Fast Deep Deformation Approximations (Bailey et al.) and the tutorials available at 3DeepLearner.
Pretty promising stuff!