"Faking" the cable trigger is really easy, which is probably why that's recommended. It's a standard connector and you just need to bridge two wires, so you can attach it direct to GPIO. I wouldn't expect you'd want to change camera settings per shot for a stacker?
If you can be more specific about what you hope ML might help with, we can give a better answer. You certainly can use ML to take a picture. You can control many cams, including Canon cams, via PTP, for which there are libraries available.