OpenAi ChatGpt on the wine industry

If you don’t work in an IT company or have some interest in artificial intelligence, there are chance that you didn’t hear about ChatGpt, and you may ask, what is the link with wine? ChatGpt is a Generative Pre-trained Transformer. In short, it is a computer model that can do language-based tasks such as text completion, answering a question, and creating text. It can generate text content based on a query, in a style you want. It is pre-trained, which means, it already accesses a large amount of data on any subject. It helps you come up with the perfect words for whatever you need. It can be used to write a letter, essay, documentation, or computer code on a vast among of subjects, just like any average human. It is very simple to use, you enter a question or a request, and a few seconds later you get a text.

If you want an example of how far you can go, CNET, the technology website published 75 articles with chatGpt. They managed to review and edit the generated content, but no reader noticed that these articles were not written by a human. A few days ago, the system passed the Medical Licensing Examination which generally requires 4 painful years in med school with 2 or 3 years of training.

But what can the wine industry fear from chatgpt? Human knowledge is used to help you navigate the intricate world of wines. Thinks about a sommelier that assists you to choose a wine based on the menu you will eat, a wine enthusiast that describes the taste of the last bottle he or she drinks, or a wine professional that produces a rating of a wine for a book or a guide. These activities imply analyzing data; the color of the wine, its aromas and flavor, and its complexity, and then producing a text describing the taste along with sensation, and emotion. The last step is exactly what ChatGpt is trained for, writing documents.

Thinks about wine enthusiasts writing an Instagram post, add with some characteristics of the wine, its color, its major aromas, and the general impressions, or wine critics reviewing a wine based on several aspects and giving a note. Here, ChatGpt can help ChatGpt could be a great help for a small Domaine that does not have access to a marketing tool or translator to create content in multiple languages. These activities mean some inputs; a human handling a glass of wine and its talent to judge it.

Is it a problem? After all, ChatGpt can be seen as writing help and should not be a threat. It can enhance spelling, and tone or add a note of humor. You can call it cheating, but you can see it as a help, like a spell checker on steroids.

But you can see that there are some problems. ChatGpt can create content without any sort of input. It assembles a lot of data and creates text from it. This text will have some quality but will be a synthesis of random information without any human critics or creativity. It can describe a wine with the same accuracy as wine critique just by extracting data from its “memory”. It can even create a description of a wine that doesn’t even exist, just give it the name of the grape and the climate. Are we ready for that, if I enjoy a wine critic or an Instagram post, it is not for its literary qualities, but because someone took the time to taste the wine and has a personal description?

Another thing I see is wine and food pairing. Wine and food pairing is a tricky thing that involves knowledge of aromas, the structure of the wine, your taste, and your preferences. If you are a wine connoisseur is still a problem, you use what you know, your intuition, and sometimes you ask for help. Some professionals are in charge of this task, sommeliers. Some are greater than others, but it is their job to give you some options, some classic, others more daring. But ChatGp is also able to do that, you give a dish, and he gives a selection of wine. I tasted the wine, and food pairing algorithm of ChatGpt, and it is far from perfect. Almost every time I got Pinot Noir. I love Pinot Noir, but ChatGpt seems to like it more. ChatGpt wine paring is academic but very correct. Wine pairing is a mix of science (knowing the food and the effects of wine), art, and psychology. It is an exchange and only filling a prompt may not be the perfect replacement for human knowledge and intuition. My guess is, It will not be long before an application can exploit this possibility and create a smartphone application, you scan the menu and you have a wine selection. It may give everybody the false sense of becoming an expert.

In conclusion, Artificial intelligence was still science fiction a few years ago, but now it is a real thing. ChatGpt could be used as a helper, just like other writing tools. It can be used for low-value tasks, where a special form and tone are needed. It can help you to create original text with your inputs; ask to write something about a particular wine, with a list of aromas, flavor, and structure, it will be your observations and your ideas, and most of the time you will rewrite what the system gave you. But it can be used without this human input, and still create decent content. There is no clue to say If it is enterally generated by a computer or with a human directive.