I've heard that some companies are attempting to utilize quantum computing algorithms for machine learning tasks (ex:protein folding and drug discovery). As far as I know, quantum computing has been primarily specialized for specific problems like prime factorization (e.g., Shor's algorithm) or the quantum Fourier transform. I haven't encountered quantum algorithms specifically designed for machine learning.
Is my understanding correct? Have there been breakthroughs that enable quantum computing to be applied to machine learning? If so, could you provide examples of such algorithms or explain how quantum computing can benefit machine learning?
I hesitated whether it is physics question, as this is about quantum computing. However, this topic may as well considered as data-science topic. If my post is off-topic here, let me know.