AI and Wine

Few things have more currency in the technology arena of popular culture than artificial intelligence. From where I sit, a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley and fully immersed in that industry’s reality-distortion field, AI is simply the hottest thing going. It’s what venture capitalists want to fund. It’s what start-up entrepreneurs want to build upon. And it’s what everyone wants to believe in. Even the wine industry.

But when it comes to the use of AI for wine, a strange dichotomy seems to exist. Namely that the most valuable uses for this technology will always be far from the public eye, while the most visible ‘applications’ of AI remain little more than glossy veneers of marketing papered over technology of dubious effectiveness. 

In short, most, if not all, of the AI-driven tools for wine that consumers can get their hands on are utter crap, and they’re not likely to improve much anytime soon.

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This article is my monthly column at JancisRobinson.Com, Alder on America, and is usually available only to subscribers of her website. If you’re not familiar with the site, I urge you to give it a try. It’s only £8.50 a month or £85 per year ($11/mo or $111 a year for you Americans) and well worth the cost, especially considering you basically get free, searchable access to the Oxford Companion to Wine ($65) and maps from the World Atlas of Wine ($50) as part of the subscription costs. Click here to sign up.