I use it in a way it's used in disciplines that also work with specialty-built, or even custom-built equipment. Such as science, military and some types of engineering (e.g. aerospace). The first sentence of the linked article describes it:

"Commercial off-the-shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf[1] (COTS) products are packaged solutions[buzzword] which are then adapted to satisfy the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of custom-made, or bespoke, solutions."

So for example, a research team may decide to not spend money on expensive scientific cameras for monitoring experiment, and instead opt to buy an expensive - but still much cheaper - DSLR sold to photographers, or strap a couple of iPhones 15 they found in the drawer (it's the future, they're all using iPhones 17, which is two generations behind the newest one). That's using COTS equipment. COTS is typically sold to less sophisticated users, but is often useful for less sophisticated needs of more sophisticated users too. But if COTS cameras start to accrue built-in algorithms that literally fake data, it may be a while before such researchers realize they're looking at photos where most of the pixels don't correspond to observable reality, in a complicated way they didn't expect.

What you're describing is edging close to the setup for the 2003 novel 'Blind Lake': https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Lake_(novel)

In the novel, quantum computers (rather than ML per-se) are tasked with interpolating more and more detailed data from astronomical observations, to the point that tracking individual members of an alien species on a distant world, underground, is possible. Eventually it is noticed that cutting off the astronomical data entirely doesn't interrupt the interpolated data. Then things get weird.

I won't go into further plot details, as that would be spoilery, but it is a pretty good book, reminiscent to me of Greg Egan's oeuvre (the novel is actually by Robert Charles Wilson).

COTS is the tech equivalent of fashions "off the rack" as compared to bespoke.

It’s a common acronym in the tech world. I’ve usually used it in the context of a “buy-or-build” conversation about software (e.g. “most businesses are best off using COTS applications than doing custom development” - that sort of thing). But the acronym means what it means, so when OP talks about COTS camera gear, it makes sense to me.

> "buy-or-build"

As an aside, the term of art is "make-or-buy" if you want to be able to Google it.

The discussion we are having is interesting because COTS are notorious for their hidden costs and how difficult they are to properly budget. Having to find a way to disable or reverse advance post-processing in a camera would be a fairly typical example of that. In this specific case it might mean having to commission a custom firmware from the camera manufacturer - something which is very much doable but might end up costing you as much as buying bespoke equipments for inferior results in the end.

Interesting, in software world I’ve always heard/used build/buy rather than make/buy, and I’m guessing that comes from construction industry as a lot of traditional software PM methodology was inspired by that world. If you Google ‘build vs buy’[0] (no quotes) all your top results are software discussions. If you Google ‘build or buy’, it’s all about housing. [1]

Make-or-buy seems more a term for manufacturing industry/SCM. TIL

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=build+vs+buy

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=build+or+buy

I did the same web search (although in all caps) and was immediately pointed to “Commercial of-the-shelf”, and I redid it now in incognito mode over a VPN, and the first answer is still “ Commercial-off-the-shelf” (with an added hyphen probably due to the language where the VPN endpoint is located.)