Microsoft has helped distill the first-ever whiskey that has been developed by artificial intelligence.
The tech giant, which is usually associated with more sober products, teamed up with a Swedish whiskey distillery to find the perfect recipe.
Details of the process used by the award-winning distillery, Mackmyra, have not been released.
But according to Popular Mechanics, master blenders fed raw data into software, which is run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and AI cognitive services.
The inputted info includes legacy recipes, sales numbers and what customers like.
Algorithms then sift out more than 70 million recipes and predict combinations which are likely to have the perfect flavor.
The possibilities for different whiskeys are said to be endless.
In fact, master blenders, who are responsible for the whiskey flavor and recipes, can spend their whole lives tasting and experimenting to hone the best ones possible.
And this is where the distillery Mackmyra, founded in 1999, wants AI to speed up this process.
“We always strive to challenge the traditions in the very traditional whiskey trade and that’s something we really do now when we develop a whiskey with the help of AI,” said master blender Angela D’Orazio.
“We see AI as a part of our digital development, it is really exciting to let AI be a complement to the craft of producing a high-quality whiskey.”
“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 whiskey in the world.”
But D’Orazio said robots won’t replace humans.
She said: “The work of a master blender is not at risk.”
“While the whiskey recipe is created by AI, we still benefit from a person’s expertise and knowledge, especially the human sensory part, that can never be replaced by any program.”
“We believe that the whiskey is AI-generated but human-curated. Ultimately, the decision is made by a person.“
Mackmyra’s AI-generated whiskey will be on sale from Autumn 2019.
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