Tag Archives: chatbots

Once again, wine and chatbots

Microsoft Copilot search page
Hey, Copilot, don’t forget the ads with your answer.

Because the wine business keeps telling us AI will save wine from itself

A recent news release heralding the arrival of a third-party chatbot to sell wine was about as breathless as something digital can get — emojis, even: “Are you ready to revolutionize the world of wine and accelerate your sales like never before? Look no further because [this company’s wine chatbot] is here to transform how consumers discover and appreciate your exceptional wines! 🍷🚀”

The WC has written about wine and artificial intelligence many times, most recently when I asked one how to market wine to young people. To which it replied: “Wine should focus on any savory flavors not normally associated with daily life consumption well outside of fruity alcohols for pitch similar ages.”

So this new bot, despite its pitch — even with the emojis — didn’t impress me. Nevertheless, because I go to great lengths to check this stuff out, I asked another AI if an AI could sell wine. In this case, it was the Microsoft Copilot chatbot; not my first choice, but the only one I could find that would answer the questions. Several froze when I asked.

Not surprisingly, Copilot was, well, useless — though, to be fair, not as useless as the first chatbot.

I asked, “Can a chatbot successfully recommend wine?” Its answer (edited for length): “Yes, chatbots can recommend wine based on a customer’s preferences and provide them with information about wine and wineries. The rise of AI and chatbots like ChatGPT is transforming the direct-to-consumer (DTC) wine industry by providing a new level of convenience, accuracy, and personalization.”

Why am I not surprised that a Microsoft product found a way to talk about how wonderful it was?

Then I asked: “What’s a good $15 wine for the holidays?” and it recommended four bottles from the Wine Enthusiast, none of which were $15 or less. And it ended with “I hope this helps you find the perfect wine for your holiday celebrations! 🍷🎉.”

Yes, more emojis.

In other words, not much different from a traditional, typed-in Google search (because I figure Copilot, whatever its failings, is too smart to use Bing). And did I mention that its answer included ads for wine and wine products?

So no, chatbots still aren’t ready to replace people when it comes to selling wine. Only the wine business would think so, yes?

Is it time to panic over chatbot wine reviews?

Frustrated computer user
“No. no, no.. petite sirah is not the same as sirah. Or even syrah.””

Hardly. How can it rant about wine the way the WC can?

Artificial intelligence and wine writing are nothing new on the blog. I’ve posted about it nine times since 2015 — before most of the media, wine or otherwise, even knew what it was.

So excuse me if I haven’t panicked about the latest chatbot developments.

Because lots of others have, whether the AI is penning poetry, developing software code, or creating term papers. A piece in the New York Times said AI writing could be used “to generate and spread untruths” (as if humanity hasn’t been doing that for as long as there has been humanity). Even the Linux community, which is usually too cool to be bothered with stuff like this, was more than a little concerned when a coding site called GitHub unveiled an AI called Copilot to “help” write code.

Yes, chatbots can help students cheat – as if they need any help. Yes, AI can be used to write news stories – if the news organization is willing to spend a lot of time editing out mistakes. And I wouldn’t be surprised if someone started using them to write the junk that’s on the back labels of wine bottles.

What AI writing can’t do is think. It can gather information and organize it, and sometimes even do a terrific job. But it can’t taste wine and write a review, and it certainly can’t decide whether a $12 wine is varietally correct or offers value. This blog post, where a tech guy described how he designed an AI to write tasting notes, was notable for two things: First, how “tasting note” they sounded, even though the information came from gathering and organizing. But that may say as much about tasting notes as they do the AI’s skills. Second, that the site mentioned in the post stopped working shortly after I wrote about it, unable to keep up with what it needed to do.

But, perhaps the most important caveat: An AI can’t decide what to write about, the way I can. Yes, it can be given an assignment, but who is going to decide what’s important enough for it to “write” about — and then decide if it can complete the assignment correctly? And it certainly can’t look at the wine business and decide what’s going on the blog for the next week.

Until that happens, we still need cranky ex-newspaper reporters.

More about AI wine writing:
• Are machine-written wine reviews closer than ever?
• Artificial intelligence and wine recommendations
• Winecast 30: Arty, the first artificial intelligence wine writer