Opinion AI-powered Coke points to a desperation to remain relevant

Perhaps the future tastes like despair. At the very least, Coca-Cola’s attempts at capturing its flavour smack of desperation. Earlier this week, the beverage brand launched “Coca-Cola Y3000”, a zero-sugar drink developed using artificial intelligence, and it is meant to evoke a sense of the future with its taste. According to the company’s website, AI was used so that “fans envision the future through emotions, aspirations, colours, flavours and more”. If you’re wondering why people who manufacture artificial drinks are messing around with code to encroach on the province of prophets and soothsayers, you’re probably not alone.

The AI-soft drink maker combo is not the first attempt at time travel through taste. Among the most celebrated, remarkable achievements in literature is À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (translated into Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time). In the seven-volume epic, the main character eats a madeleine — a bite-sized cake — and is instantly transported to his childhood, and the books unfold. But even Proust did not see the future of the characters he wrote. Coke, on the other hand, imagines it will still exist, 1,000 years on. Unfortunately, if the initial reactions to Y3000 are anything to go by, the future of coke doesn’t taste too good.

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AI, machine learning, augmented reality, futuristic — the rush to get on the jargon bandwagon seems to be overtaking even the most successful businesses. The arrogance of predicting taste or, conversely, the silliness of the idea, betrays a lack of creative imagination. Coca-Cola is an iconic brand that has managed to be a leader in the food and beverage space for the better part of a century. Y3000, though, seems like the sad attempt of a legacy player to appear new, when it does not need to — like a middle-aged man in a backwards cap. Better, always, to stay with what’s working. Corporate hotshots shouldn’t try to imagine the past or the future, with or without AI. Leave that to the writers.