World’s first AI-generated whisky is set to hit the shelves in Autumn, Swedish distillery Mackmyra announced.
Microsoft and Finnish technology consultancy Fourkind are partnering Mackmyra in this first experiment of creating a complex consumer product recipe with machine learning.
“We always strive to challenge the traditions in the very traditional whisky trade and that’s something we really do now when we develop a whisky with the help of AI,” said Angela D’Orazio from Mackmyra.
“It is really exciting to let AI be a complement to the craft of producing a high-quality whisky. For me as a Master Blender it is a great achievement to be able to say that I’m now also a mentor for the first ever created AI whisky in the world.”
AI has been used to augment and automate the most time-consuming process of whisky creation. The distillery’s machine learning models, powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and AI cognitive services, are fed with Mackmyra’s existing recipes, sales data, and customer preferences. With this dataset the AI can generate more than 70 million recipes that it predicts will be popular and of the highest quality.
“This AI-generation can have an impact in different industries globally,” said a Microsoft spokesperson.
“I envision AI systems generating recipes for sweets, perfumes, beverages, and maybe even sneaker designs. Many of these have already been attempted, but large-scale adoption is still lagging behind. We are showing the way forward, and these new AI solutions can be used to generate products that retain the spirit, look and feel of the brands behind them, while at the same time being new and unique.”
However, the AI solution is not designed to replace a Master Blender. The idea is for the whisky to be generated by AI and still be curated by a person.
“Algorithms don’t have senses so we need another take on how to understand something so complex as whisky,” said Jarno Kartela, machine learning partner at Fourkind.
