AI Mixologist vs. Human Bartender: Can You Taste the Difference? | WIRED

Can people distinguish the taste between a cocktail generated by AI and one lovingly crafted by a human bartender? We challenged a group of bar patrons to submit their drink preferences in order to produce two unique cocktails for them to try. Watch and see which drinks align best with individual human flavor profiles: the precision of AI or the art of human craftsmanship.
Director: Sean Dacanay; Joe Pickard
Director of Photography: Dylan Bergeson; Sean Havey
Expert: Robert Gonzalez
Creative Producer: Wendi Jonassen
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette; D. Eric Martinez
Production Coordinator: Fernando Davila
Casting Producer: Vanessa Brown
Gaffer: Cameron Nielsen
Sound Mixer: Greg Miller
Production Assistant: Zachariah Keiler-Bradshaw; Bria Light
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[@blunderbass851]

This video could be easily 2, 3 times as long. I really wanted to see the whole process for each of these.

[@dstutz]

The first round they did was the proper format for this, no idea why they abandoned that for a more montage-like video. Didn't make any sense

[@Overclownfidence]

​@@dstutzmaybe they have ai planning the video 😂

[@sarahfiore2167]

@@Overclownfidence Honestly, maybe. There were a bunch of credits in the description but no credit to any editors.

[@MCSamenspender]

@@sarahfiore2167 there is credit for an editor

[@TheRealKSmith]

Its disappointing y'all just skip the drinks the AI instructed the bartender to make that people guessed on. Those are supposed to be the ones actually worth seeing

[@drttalk]

Video was just lacking all around.

[@willderkacs6718]

Came here expecting that. The first person set up for everyone is what i wanted

[@Freundinnen100]

True. I would watch this much longer and see everybodies drink where made.

[@fotmasta]

We aren’t all afflicted with nanosecond attention spans. Editing ruined this

[@holodoctor1]

I wish you guys would make a “long” version of this video with all of the tests like the first. I want to see what AI put in and people’s reactions.

[@JSGilbert]

The question should have been, “Which of the 2 drinks do you prefer?” Unfortunately, guessing at AI vs. Human gives us no clues as to either AI’s or the barman’s actual ability to interpret the request to the liking and/ or palatability.

[@Time_Traveling_Corgi]

Agreed! They are playing a game of Werewolf.

[@Alr1ghtyThen]

Plus i am thinking that the bartender made his own creations better either on purpose or by accident. He said "we don't usually stir drinks with juice in then" which tells my he's even making the AI drinks against his own bias.

[@KundakStuff]

​@@Alr1ghtyThen His point there was though that's not normally what a professional bartender would do (certain things are to be stirred, shaken, or floated), the AI said to do it, so he did. That's simply called following instructions which keeps the "experiment" unbiased... The bartender making his own drinks "better" was the point with the human connection vs AI.

[@Alr1ghtyThen]

@@KundakStuff i understand that. Now think about a time when you were asked to do something that your heart wasn't into it compared to a time when you were enthusiastic. I think that translates into making things and how it comes out.

[@juliaoliver2446]

Do you really think that somebody is going to stir differently based on whether or not their heart is in it? Are you an idiot? ​@@Alr1ghtyThen

[@SchgurmTewehr]

1:22 „but screw it, let’s do what the AI wants“ is going to be such a normal thing to say in the future.

[@stranostrani9212]

yes but when we could actually trust more an AI judgment then a human one

[@SchgurmTewehr]

@@stranostrani9212 not sure

[@SchgurmTewehr]

@@stranostrani9212 and tbh I was joking

[@Ghost-pb4ts]

pretty high chance your children or grandchildren won't trust a human driver@@SchgurmTewehr

[@chillfluencer]

I hope so - because the bias of an AI can improve permanently and globally...but there are always new breeds of biased humans.

[@KataKismet]

People guessing which is which ≠ which they liked better. I’d be curious to know what the numbers were for that

[@SchgurmTewehr]

They say what they liked and based on that who they think made it. It’s the same thing in this video.

[@michealsont]

​@SchgurmTewehr it wasn't a one to one "I like the drink so the human must have made it" one guy even said he though the AI was just being lazy about a drink he said he liked

[@SchgurmTewehr]

@@michealsont yeah but most argued like I described.

[@JSGilbert]

exactly. This is the faulty type of analytics we see employed so much of the time.

[@AdrianHereToHelp]

"I don't feel like they mix very well, but who am I to judge?" asks the professional bartender/mixologist

[@misterscottintheway]

This was a disappointing video. The narrative starts to feel extremely rushed after the first drink and then there is absolutely no payoff. The bartender's spiel at the end was at odds with the actual results. Absolutely no insight. Makes me wonder if the whole video was written and edited by ChatGPT. I want my 5 minutes back.

[@Noise_floorxx]

Lmao

[@ryanbent9368]

😂😂

[@godbacchus]

Probably would help to have a ranking in addition to guessing which one is AI. Doesn't necessarily tell us anything...

[@M3Busssin]

AI won’t listen to your problems though

[@nosferatu5500]

haha

[@ShenobiYT]

Underrated comment.

[@michaelchallis4129]

AI won’t pretend your problems are important.

[@rightboys]

not yet! 🫠😝

[@jurassicthunder]

​@@rightboysdoesn't matter when. you can't relate to a robot.

[@stchaltin]

I’ve been a bartender for a decade. I spent ages coming up with bespoke flavor and economic variables for each customer. If this is the direction the future is going, you can make your own drinks. I’m out.

[@freakyjason477]

They are literally guessing 50/50, so out of 2 choices they can't pick better than a random guess. I'm saying AI is on-par with humans. They should redo this and have all drinks made by a human or all drinks made by AI and see if they can guess right. Pretty sure they'd still come up with 50/50.

[@askadoctor1262]

This video is just watching a counter go up. Pointless

[@marcovasquez9543]

Such a cool idea. Horribly executed in edit.

[@WendifurTTV]

Would have been a better video if it showed way more than it did and made it longer. The first person was great because it showed both drinks being made and a lot of comments by the customer. Then it just went totally down hill not giving much detail on any of the others. And perhaps to get a better reading, also tally which one each person liked better.

[@OfftoWork]

The ultimate goal is really to see how it could be harnessed in real life hospitality settings. We're super interested in this question too and just started a series to explore it... would love to hear your thoughts on the first episode!

[@greengeezer5069]

Who cares if they can guess if an AI made a drink. Ir would be more informative if they said which drink was BETTER.

[@Bulldogg6404]

Another way to frame this result: the AI went toe to toe with someone who spent, as I assume, a decent part of their life learning and fine-tuning their craft, and succeeded in convincing half of the party-goers that it was good enough to produce a cocktail at the same level, despite being an imperfect technology and not purposefully designed to replace bartenders. I am thrilled and can't wait to see what it will do next!

[@kinnywilson9800]

I want to see which drink the customers actually preferred.

[@Casanova646]

Fun video but I wish you showed the number count for how many people preferred the drink made by A.I. rather than people guessing which was made by A.I.

[@stevewindisch2882]

I would have liked to see the bartender's comments along with the person's guess. e.g. The bartender thought AI was completely wrong to mix certain flavors, but the patron loved it and guessed a person created it. Also, I'm wondering if the patrons were merely saying their favorite drink was the one created by a bartender and the one they didn't like was AI generated.

[@CAstrawberrygirl]

I would love to dig into what makes something "creative" vs subtle. Do people expect AI to go against the norms? Does AI tend to mix together liquors or flavors that humans would not naturally combine? Does AI predict accurately predict the outcome of those unique flavor combinations? I would be interested in seeing if AI can introduce us to mixing liquors and flavors that we would not normally pair together.

[@nealwright5630]

What's missing here is a count of how many preferred the AI drink over the human drink.

[@TalEdds]

This is not something GPT 4 is supposed to be good at, but it still managed. Good to see people pushing its boundaries.

[@masonkim7]

as companies/app developers build up big data in terms of human preferences and the nuances involved in making an alcoholic beverage, the results will get better and better. for now humans win. In the future AI will win. It all comes down to how and who will be able to leverage big data in order to apply it to this small part of life. It'll take a while because there are other more important aspects of life such as diseases and illnesses that are first in line for this process to develop.

[@OccasionallyElijah]

Why did you cut out all the content lol

[@omgitsjulian]

Cocktails at their core are just ratios and balance. Once you know what you're working with then you can make substitutions. Example a classic sour is: 2oz strong, 1.5 acidic, .75 sweet.. It's fairly obvious that an AI can do just as good if not a better job than a bartender can, as can a cocktail calculator or a simple classic ratio book have existed for a very very long time. Bartenders are not going away anytime soon for one; legal reasons, - you need to monitor people while they sip poison. And 2 just the basic human element - Just think Starbucks (robot makes your coffee, human hands it to you).

[@bluetextonwhitebg]

lol cope harder. bartenders are easily the first to get wiped out by ai and good riddance. at least a robot won't give you a snotty attitude or try to scam you by illegally upcharging your tab. it'll likely be robots serving drinks and either a bouncer or the owner making sure no one causes trouble.

[@omgitsjulian]

@@bluetextonwhitebg Sad to hear you have had negative experience with bartenders, that's never good to hear. I looked fairly in-depth around the laws for serving booze, and don't see it changing anytime soon. The TLDR; is - there legally obliged to monitor your health and safety while consuming alcohol. As far as robots, we have quite a long way to go... We're fairly (more like extremely) limited to due to our battery capacity, size, and density constraints.

[@lebronjohnson6735]

People don't understand how gpt works. It's not creating new cocktails based on the preferences. It's scanning the pattern of thousands of cocktail recipes online created by Humans and then trying to create a pattern out of these. How good that works shows the first recipe.

[@oyuyuy]

You don't understand how "new" works. It doesn't matter if it's inspired by existing recipes, if it's new it's new. A human would probably do it in the same way - if you wanted a new sour drink, you might look at recipes for other sour drinks and just pick and mix with similar proportions.

[@onkelpappkov2666]

"Passion fruit juice and some alcohol." This one is AI made, since it's literally just passion fruit juice and a random alcohol. This one is human made because I got weird looks of pity, someone told me there's no passion fruit and I compromised to OJ vodka instead.

[@agingmillennialmainer]

Its a language model. It predicts words.

[@taja1101]

Who else wants to try those cocktails now besides me? They look so tasty! >.

[@washyrose5904]

Cohesive: Human Dissonant: AI I love her.

[@ilmube]

"I soaked the drill bit in citric acid and it appeared to dissolve and turn black, emitting a strong iron-like odor. Is it dangerous after I smelled it several times?"

[@fauxvier8519]

Man now i wanna try to visit a bartender

[@sicksixsixsix27]

Give us more!

[@deckardcraigwyr8573]

AI almost tie with the professional bartender, so for basically regular people can trust AI to make their own drink

[@Felik18]

0:33 this guy looks like David Lynch also why are people guessing which is AI and which is human instead of just saying which one they liked more?

[@HeatherE303]

So what was the final score?

[@twood25]

how did they get david lynch

[@edwardfreeman9346]

I was expecting it to skew one way or the other - Was definitely not expecting an exact split!

[@juanjm12]

Cold ones

[@chamansw]

This video felt like a poorly put shorts video but longer

[@andreamoreno5186]

Hey I think it's worth a redo! ❤ We want to see more!!

[@titaniumaura]

_Peace be with you._

[@sj3530]

Confusing. The first one was the ideal one. Others are just too mixed up to infer anything properly.

[@invox9490]

Do you really think people are gonnna care who serves their drink/food when all they want is a cheeseburger and a coke?

[@imnotyou23]

Don't need to watch to know AI would make the better drink

[@Freundinnen100]

It would be interesting to see how an mocktail without alkohol would be made.

[@robinb9359]

The KZbin video fell flat, super cool concept but give us a longer videooo

[@Aragorn7884]

It's all 50/50...🤷

[@cheekymonkeync]

Was the AI given general bartender knowledge and practices?

[@piratediffusion]

Who let the same bartender make the AI drinks? That's like letting a union taxi driver inspect a Waymo

[@Skitigdread]

Bartender: This recipe was stolen of the internet AI: No, it wasn't Bartender: Yes it was AI: Nu-uh Bartender: Yeah it was, check out this link AI: Nu.. you know what - just shut up and drink your drink

[@itsking2u]

AI is like I'm here for a good time not a long time lol everyone is getting 💩faced lol

[@wtfyoumeaninvalid]

Just shows you all the technical dos and donts nonsense of "mixology" doesn't really matter.

[@lgbtthefeministgamer4039]

it's still someone who's well versed in those technical dos and donts making the AI drinks though, technique and knowledge def gonna make a difference

[@manawearblack]

Such a great idea, horribly carried out. Whoever produced/directed/edited this really had bad days at the office

[@Noise_floorxx]

I ageee. It had a lot of potential but it didn’t live up to it.

[@BobLobOnACob]

looks funn

[@racerollebol]

Where do you even find these people. If people say "cohesive" to my drink I'd frown

[@thanos879]

Not that interesting. When actual robot hands make the drink then holla at me.

[@BalazsSuhajda]

Using chatgpt to generate cocktail recipes is like asking a linguist. How about an AI that is actually purpose trained instead? 😉

[@Parks_21]

Wired You definitely cheapened the video , I wish the format of the video would follow the first Where the bartender explained what he was going to do and And he would give his input as he was making the AI drink I don't care if the video would be longer but I like that kind of detail and Input into opinions

[@HeatherE303]

Well this proves to me I will not be trusting AI.

[@iamspeedkachow5926]

Was really interested in seeing this, but it was a huge disappointment. That first one was good, all of the AI drinks should’ve been listed out and every customer’s reaction like the first one would’ve been great too. This video was just a pointless counter

[@MartyD]

prefer the human touch

[@CJ-zt3zx]

Was this video directed and produced by an AI?

[@Mojkanal1234]

This was way too short, like condensed a 20 min video into 5 mins.

[@imicca]

What a wasted opportunity

[@Time_Traveling_Corgi]

You added to many variables. Instead of "Which is the AI?", do which is better. This just turned into a game of werewolf.

[@amogelangmolapo7259]

It's crazy how AI is getting more and more advanced.It's honestly scary.

[@kidgame2584]

AI is rapidly developing. Its scary.

[@lebronjohnson6735]

Did you watch the video??

[@KundakStuff]

See, this is some of the AI I can really get behind. Such fun!

[@AudiophileTommy]

I’ll take human every time 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

[@danyaneeze6940]

peace and love, but wtf were sean and joe thinking with the direction of this editing. this definitely could’ve been a viral video if it didn’t feel so half assed

[@joshuaDstarks]

One of these drinks was lovingly crafted by a bartender looking to pay his bills and put food in the fridge. The other is lifelessly concocted by a rigid machine based on a bunch of beeps and boops. No kids, no bills, not even a belly to fill.

[@stchaltin]

Bars will use AI to craft new cocktail menus and wonder why nobody thinks their drinks are good. That one drink had vodka and scotch and gin!! All together!!

[@thehorsesnamewasfriday8695]

there are so many things wrong with this video

[@pauldannelachica2388]

❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@aresgalamatis7022]

Does what people refer to as "AI" get better or are the humans are getting worse and regressing to the level that we can model them with simplistic statistical algorithms (which is what journalist usually refer as "AI")?

[@beat1835]

ya’ll lazy to edit or what

[@captnzursee]

cool idea and a cool bartender, but ridiculously bad video editing. wtf.

[@dlibby4979]

Someones job is on the line

[@oldcowbb]

you need a custom made model for drinks, not chatgpt

[@LiD0349]

This video is so lazy, wtf

[@acoasterbro]

Boring.