World's First AI-Generated Whiskey Coming Later This Year
For centuries whiskey has been cultivated by craftsmen drawing on knowledge and experience passed through generations. Single-malts have long been considered superior to blends, which are made by combining a number of single malts. One of the world's most expensive single-malts, a Macallan 1946, sold at an auction for a $460,000, while a Chivas Regal Royal Salute blend, which was created in 2002 to celebrate the golden jubilee of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, has sold for $10,000 a bottle. But now Microsoft has teamed up with Swedish distillery Mackmyra and Finnish consultancy Fourkind to use what's being dubbed as the world's first "bionic blender" to create the perfect tipple. Machine learning analyzes existing recipes, sales data and customer preferences to generate a dataset of more than 70 million recipes that a robot predicts will be popular. While Microsoft's leap from software to spirits might raise eyebrows in the Highlands of Scotland, the American software giant says its digital distiller will not replace the expertise and knowledge of human experts.
For centuries whiskey has been cultivated by craftsmen drawing on knowledge and experience passed through generations. Single-malts have long been considered superior to blends, which are made by combining a number of single malts. One of the world's most expensive single-malts, a Macallan 1946, sold at an auction for a $460,000, while a Chivas Regal Royal Salute blend, which was created in 2002 to celebrate the golden jubilee of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, has sold for $10,000 a bottle. But now Microsoft has teamed up with Swedish distillery Mackmyra and Finnish consultancy Fourkind to use what's being dubbed as the world's first "bionic blender" to create the perfect tipple. Machine learning analyzes existing recipes, sales data and customer preferences to generate a dataset of more than 70 million recipes that a robot predicts will be popular. While Microsoft's leap from software to spirits might raise eyebrows in the Highlands of Scotland, the American software giant says its digital distiller will not replace the expertise and knowledge of human experts.
