1y ago

Coca-Cola's New AI-Generated Soda Flavor Falls Flat

gizmodo.com Coca-Cola's New AI-Generated Soda Flavor Falls Flat

CokeGPT is about as half-baked as all of the hype surrounding AI.

107 comments

I have so many questions, none of which are answered by the article. Was the flavor really picked by an AI? If so, how did they train the AI? What kind of AI was this? What other flavors did it come up with? Did they try a bunch of them and this was the best one they could get?
This whole thing just screams marketing stunt to me, and not a particularly good one. I can't wait for this whole AI thing to just die out already. How is it that every tech fad seems to somehow end up being even dumber than the previous one (although I think the whole NFT thing might have set a new low bar)?
- It’s just the latest in a long line of experimental, conceptual Coke flavours. Honestly, it’s something I’ve been saying for years; stop being constrained by imitating “real” flavours and let the flavour scientists loose, let 'em go nuts.
  So far they've done:
  Space (I liked that, hints of toasted carmel and raspberries)
  Dream (Also good, a little bubblegummy, a little cotton candy-y, a little mangolike)
  Transformation (Awful, like coke with coconut oil and a hint of turpentine)
  Byte (Just decent, kind of indescribable)
  Pixel (I never got to try it, it was US only, but by all descriptions it wasn't great)
  Movement (A bit like theatre butter and cinnamon, it was okay but wasn't a fan)
  And now AI flavour. I plan to give it a shot, but I don't expect much after their last two Tech-y flavours were eh.
  
  Where do you get all these Coca Cola flavours? I'm in Germany and have only ever seen vanilla, lemon, cherry and life (next to the default, light and zero).
  
  You're totally right, everyone knows that blue has been one of the best flavors for a long time, yet most companies are scared because blue "isn't real".
  
  I tried the XP flavored coke that is marketed towards gamers and I couldn't really tell a difference between it and Coca-Cola Classic™. Maybe it has a slightly bit more licoricish flavor? I couldn't tell because I was too busy leveling up with all of the XP I was gaining while drinking it.
  
  Mountain Dew seems to have been leaning into that, and it's mostly been good. I don't know what their latest Halloween mystery flavor is supposed to be. It's certainly nothing natural. But I like it.
  
  And now AI flavour
  "mmmm, tastes like real AI!"
  
  I really think they should bring back Starlight, possibly outside the Coke brand. To me, it tasted like graham cracker.
  
  I always try the other flavors, but can’t say I’ve liked any of them. The AI one was probably the worst of them though.
  
  I loved Starlight and dream. Both were the kinda things that I wouldn't want every drink to be like, but wow were they cool to try out and I'd absolutely try any experimental flavours I see because of that.
  I wasn't aware of most of the others though. I think these can be harder to find in some places. Most of the ones I've had were from 7-11s or similar convenience stores, but I don't usually even go to such places.
  
  I've tried most of those. The first one, which was called starlight in the states, was the best one so far. The others haven't been as good. The new AI one is probably the one I've liked the most since starlight.
  
  Space (I think it was branded "Starlight") was really good, Id keep getting it if it were available. Then I tried Dream (it was meh), couldn't get the Starlight I wanted, and just... ignored them from then on out. This new one is the first one Ive tried in a while; its ok, vaguely autumnal (cinnamon-y...?) but Im not hooked.
- They probably trained it using data from their Coca-Cola freestyle dispensers if you’ve used one. That’s my guess.
  
  People like Vanilla and people like Grape, so here's Vanilla-Grape by CokeAI!
  Sounds horrifyingly plausible.
- The answer is simple. They’re using blockchain NFTs to reach new market growth using AI to provide flavor solutions to consumers
  
  I can’t wait to get Bored Ape-flavored Coke on the blockchain!
- “Unsurprisingly, ‘Diarrhea Sasquatch Xtreme’ hit the mark yet failed to wow test groups,” is likely one of many test flavors removed from the article for PR reasons.
  
  Sorry about that. I had taco bell for lunch.
- The press release they link to is not especially forthcoming with information either and all they can get in terms of details is from that press release and tasting it themselves.
- Yeah, I'm guessing it was as as much an "AI" thing as everything was "i-something" about 20 years ago, or a bunch of stuff, even video game consoles, were the "something something computer" 40 years ago
- Companies using AI in a stupid way will die out, but the models themselves are far too useful for certain job fields (probably not yours or you wouldn't be comparing it to NFT's) for them to ever die. They're going to expand and become integrated into the data environment.
- I don't know what their ai process looks like, what kind of data they trained it on, etc.
  But annecdotally, I've played around a bit with chatgpt making cocktail recipes, and it's been surprisingly good at it. They sometimes need a little fine-tuning but they tend to get you in a pretty close ballpark, it's made some interesting suggestions I probably wouldn't have thought of, but nothing that turned out to be bad.
  A lot of recipes tend to follow some pretty well-established ratios which means they can be broken down into some sort of mathematical formula which is something computers can actually do pretty well, and it's often just a matter for swapping out one ingredient or combination of them for another that is similarly salty/sweet/bitter/sour/umami.
  For example a standard recipe for punch is 1 part sour, 2 of sweet, 3 of strong (liquor of your choice), 4 of weak (tea, juice, soda, water, etc.) and you can mix and match just about any ingredients that fit those profiles and get a drinkable punch.
  I'm sure a company like coke probably has a long list of flavorings with known and well-documented flavor profiles that an ai trained on a list of proven recipes could mix and match with all day long.
  
  That's not how a LLM like Chatgpt works. It's not referencing cocktail recipes, compiling their ingredients, seeing commonalities, figuring out mathematical formulas, and then experimenting with the variables. That kind of thing is still probably a decade or more away, if not decades.
  If you're curious, see what people have tried to do with AI generated recipes that fit nutrition guidelines and how they never add up correctly.
  From what I've seen of cocktails and recipe books, there's probably a lot more of them than you realize. I guarantee you there are thousands of cocktail recipes you've never heard of that have been written into published recipe books.
  All of that to say that Chatgpt is basically just making up arrangements of words that based on its training should go together.
  
  A lot of recipes tend to follow some pretty well-established ratios which means they can be broken down into some sort of mathematical formula which is something computers can actually do pretty well, and it’s often just a matter for swapping out one ingredient or combination of them for another that is similarly salty/sweet/bitter/sour/umami.
  So, basically what people who are decent at cooking do all the time. Groundbreaking.
- AI isn't going to die out but hopefully it'll get quieter and more boring/focused.
  
  It will absolutely die out in that it will go back to what it was previously. We've been using "AI" for decades now, only it's better known under the name machine learning. This latest surge in interest is just a bunch of marketing hype and a bunch of executives too stupid to realize they're being fed a line of bullshit by contractors promising if they hire them to make an "AI" they'll be able to fire their entire workforce and dump their salaries into fat executive bonuses. Just like all the previous tech fads this will stop being the hot thing once enough of these douche-bags get burned and even the dumbest of them learns that no, you can't just replace your entire workforce with "AI" and call it a day.
- Well, on the label of the ones I tried it said co-developed by AI.
  So yeah, probably marketing stunt
  That said, if it hadn't been artificially sweetened, I would probably have preferred it to the normal one. Felt like it had more flavor. Similar to Fritz Cola from Germany.
- Deep Learning at least can produce useful tools here or there. No one has yet to come up with a good idea for why NFTs should be a thing. Though I'm sure someone will come along with their niche use that, on further consideration, doesn't actually solve anything after all.

You mean to tell me that a flavour designed by an algorithm that can't taste or smell, or even actually think, is bad? I'm shocked.
- Apparently Watson, the IBM AI that won Jeopardy, is actually pretty good at making recipes. That said, this is because it analyzes chemical compositions of known good recipes to find the compounds that make us like them and finds things that can produce similar profiles, rather than just sticking strings of text together in new ways.
- Pictures drawn by an algorithm that can't see, feel or even think can look pretty good. Why would this be fundamentally different for taste?
  
  "Pretty good" isn't really enough when it comes to food or drinks. Those pictures are still giving people more than five fingers on each hand. Extra legs. All kinds of things like that. Why would it do recipes any better?

Wow no shit, it's going to be very annoying to see every single company try to slap AI onto their product in order to market it until the hype dies down
- This reminds me of the dot com bobble.
  Now you get %10000 evaluation if you slap AI in the investors powerpoint slide.

The problem probably was that Coke isn't in the soda creating business. People already drink a ridiculous amount of sodas. Coke is in the soda cheapening business, the only thing left for them to do is cut corners until making soda costs nothing. New sodas are just an opportunity for them to redefine cheap to a new low. This is why you should buy independent, small scale soda companies. Their entire business model is making something better than Coke.
- Coke is in the branding business, IMHO.
  They do a lot more advert creation than they do drink creation.
  Pretty much all modern branded consumer goods invest way more on brand recognition and the kind of advertising that says nothing about quality and is purelly designed to create a subconsciously association they brand and positive feelings and/or make it seem socially fashionable (you know the kind: happy friends around a campfire having fun with package-of-branded-good on their hands)
  (Those things are actually funny to analyse: generally drinks do "social/trendy", perfumes do "sex", cars do "freedom")
  At some point in the 60s in the US a nephew of Freud (I kid you not!) introduced actual teachings from the Science of Psychology into Advertising and since then consumers of large brands have been mostly manipulated via that kind of psychologically manipulative advert. Nowadays you pretty much only see other kinds of adverts for cases like small brands trying to expand brand recognition (something the likes of Coka-Cola doesn't need), and for the rest seldom are the actual qualities of the product being sold mentioned.
- I don't think cheap is what they're after. Unless you mean this somehow helps their margins? Around here a 20oz soda is approaching $3 USD when just a year ago it was nearly half that. That's definitely not cheap.
  
  Cheap for them to make, not for us to buy.

The last few flavors they came out with that were supposedly not AI created also sucked.
- I don't know why they don't just put the coke back. It'd definitely sell better than any of their recent attempts.
  
  Step 1. Use Coca Cola tier money and influence to end the stupid drug war, changing the trajectory of millions of lives and breaking the cycle of incarceration.
  Step 2. Receive praise for the immense social good you've done and bask in the once in a century marketing opportunity.
  Step 3. Put the cocaine back in Coke bitch fuck yeahhhhh

See Futurama already explored this problem with Bender. As a robot, he can't taste food, but he learned the secret to Ultimate Flavor. It's hallucinogenics. Coca-Cola co. forgot to drop acid into their AI-generated soda. And I'm not talking about the kind that strips rust off of bumpers. Coke has enough of that in it already.
- No, the secret ingredient was water. Ordinary water. Laced with nothing more than a few spoonfuls of LSD.
  
  spoonfuls
- I enjoyed the episode, but hoo boy lsd would not act as a flavour enhancer, take hours to kick in, and probably make a good chunk of people feel nauseous.

This is the sort of idea I'd have expected from Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock
- Hey, Homonym was a big hit!
  God Cop on the other hand....

The Prompt: "AI, create a soda flavor!"
The response: "Heres a recipe for a soda flavor... 1C corn syrup, 2C carbonated water, 1tsp your choice of food coloring. I could have prefaced this recipe with 10 paragraphs explaining the history of soda littered with browser breaking ads, but I am not a sociopath."
- Should stick with Marge's homemade Pepsi.
- Of course an AI would use shitty imperial measurements instead of metric

Chatgpt can be a cool way to generate ideas for flavours. It's ultimately a tool. That means there needs to be someone to actually test, tweak and verify those ideas, which at that point it's no longer AI generated.

Surprising no one.

I was really hoping this was an article with early sales numbers showing it's a flop. I already assumed it was going to taste bad, that feels like a given to me. I want it to be a failure in sales so this kind of thing stops happening.
- It will do well in sales initially due to FOMO, but I am guessing it won't last due to it not tasting especially interesting.
  
  That is my assumption as well. That's kind of the trend with most new flavors of soda it seems. Very few actually stick. This one is just so much more obnoxious in origin than most that I want it to die quicker lol.

Coke Y3000 sounds like it was supposed to be the kind of thing that would be used in a metaverse tie-in promo.
- Buy a Y3000 coke and get a copy of it in the Metaverse! First 3000 to redeem the code get a limited-edition T-shirt too because everyone loves to be walking ad space!

Can't wait until my King Arthur AI-Generated Flour turns out to be a 5 pound bag of uncut cocaine.
- "You, too, can lift Excalibur from the stone."
  Motto on the cocaine bag
- Aka: “Original Coke”

Ok, but I read that sentence near the beginning as "The massive beverage company has trapped an artificial intelligence to serve as its advisor" and I think it'd be neat if corporations had to patiently lie in wait for an unsuspecting AI to come along and bait it with some tasty data before they can use it.

i'm gonna give you marketing geniuses a call when i need a Future Coke..
it'll be in The Future..

You can taste the silicon!

What Coke offshoots have actually landed? Like Zero, Diet, Cherry, Vanilla and maybe Lemon?
- You're forgetting New Coke, which actually wasn't that bad and I kinda miss it.
  
  I remember New Coke. It was really sweet. I liked it. Then again, I was six, and I liked anything that was sweet, lol.
- I stopped after they got rid of coke clear.
  Edit. Sorry that Pepsi crystal. I think that was replaced by Crystal meth.
- Cinnamon coke was incredible

I don't think it was a bad flavor, it tasted like if you went to one of these Coke Freestyle machine and mixed a little bit of every flavor of Coca Cola together: A generically sweet, artificial fruity flavor.
The packaging are pretty cool though.

MSG and truffle oil with a splash of hazelnut spread
- Dafuq? Where is the avocado?!
  
  Cut him a break. He's trying to save for a house.

The flavor tasted like a sprite but with a fruity aftertaste to me. Honestly didn’t know any ai involvement with the drink when I initially got it I just like trying the coke creations flavors. Starlight was still my favorite.

It's unfortunate too. This is actually my favorite flavor they have released.

Is it bad that I liked it more than anything else they've done?

I guess they didn't learn from their Coke Classicdebacle.
- That was coke trying to mimic pepsi as well as change the flavor of their flagship product. They've made dozens of other flavors before. This is not really like the new coke/coke classic situation tbh
  
  Was it "cheaper" too? I feel like companies are so predictable its scary

I bought some of the Zero Calorie kind this weekend.
My friends and I thought it tasted pretty good, honestly. What I COULDN’T find were full sized cans of it. I wanted to buy a 12 pack, but could only find the little cans in a 10 pack.
That said, one of my friends bought a 20oz of the regular, super sugar kind. And…I didn’t like it as much. The zero calorie one tasted better to me 100%.
- I don't think any of the coke creation flavors have been available in the 12oz cans, at least I've never seen any. Only 20oz bottles and the mini cans

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