Above: some of my students in the graduate program at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, a hamlet of Bra commune in the Roero subregion of Piedmont.
During their seminars on digital wine communications, the wine and spirits grad students and their instructor decided to take artificial intelligence “out for a drive,” so to speak. Their goal was to determine whether or not Bard, Google’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot, could create humanlike content about wine and viticulture.
The group started by lobbing Bard a soft ball.
“Please write a blog post, with title, about the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences.” This was to be the “control” entry, a relatively easy pitch that the students could swiftly verify (given that they are students at the university).
As expected, Bard regurgitated and even quoted passages from the densely populated UniSG website:
The Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) is a unique institution that offers a multidisciplinary approach to food studies. Founded in 2004 by Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, UNISG is located in Pollenzo, Italy, a small town in the Piedmont region.
UNISG’s mission is to “educate gastronomes, people equipped with knowledge and skills in the agricultural and food sector, capable of driving food production, distribution and consumption towards proper, viable choices and helping to create a sustainable future for the planet.”
But students and instructor alike were surprised that there was absolutely no mention of wine, viticulture, and spirits studies — all core subjects.
But even more startling was that toward the end of the post, Bard shifted from a descriptive tone to an optative mode.
“If you are looking for a challenging and rewarding educational experience,” wrote Bard using language seemingly lifted from a 1970s ad campaign, “UNISG is the perfect place for you.”
All the more unexpected since the group had not asked it to recruit new students. But the content was solid.
Then, they asked Bard to write a post about a winery with attenuated but lyrical web presence. Beyond fact sheets about the wine, the estate’s website’s primary content is a poetical discourse on the winemaker’s philosophy.
And here things started to get strange.
“The winery is certified organic and biodynamic.” Not true.
It’s “a popular destination for wine lovers, and the winery offers a variety of wine tastings and tours. The winery also has a restaurant, which serves traditional Piedmontese cuisine.” Not true, not true. In fact, entirely made up!
Then came the tasting notes.
“The wine is full-bodied and flavorful, with notes of red fruit, spice, and tobacco.”
One member of the group had recently tasted at said winery. They found it unusual that “tobacco” was used as a tasting descriptor for wine in question. The tasting notes, in general, seemed odd. The winery’s fact sheets don’t include any mention of tobacco.
In conclusion, wrote Bard, “I hope this blog post has inspired you to visit [the] winery in Roero. The winery is a great place to learn about sustainable winemaking practices, taste award-winning wines, and enjoy a traditional Piedmontese meal.”
As my daughters, ages 10 and 11 would say, “CRINGE!”
Two things became clear with subsequent queries:
1) when Bard was tasked with creating content about subjects where ample information was available on the internet, it produced a generic but honest blog post;
2) when tasked with create content where scant info is available, it created misinformation.
The group’s conclusions were that:
1) AI still cannot be relied on for useful, factual information when it comes to wine and viticulture;
2) AI’s wine-focused copy still comes across as wooden and overly generalized; it lacks the verve and originality of human-generated content.
My personal thought is that wine writing remains an entirely idiosyncratic enterprise and lacks the kind of overarching standards and conventions that would facilitate the creation of AI-generated content.
When we asked Bard to write about Google authority, a subject we discussed at length, it did a great job. When asked to describe a groovy winery in Roero, it came across as a phony and fake.
But how long is that going to last?