ChatGPT cocktails battle with Axelrad Beer Garden bartenders

Axelrad Beer Garden in Midtown Houston is a staple for drinks, live music and a chill vibe.

We all knew the robots would come for our jobs sooner than later (Editor's note: A human definitely wrote this story), but it didn't occur to us that they could replace one of our society's most valuable players: bartenders.

For the whole month of March, Houston bar Axelrad Beer Garden will be pitting their human mixologists against ChatCPT, an artificial intelligence software that has been making headlines recently. The weeks-long event dubbed "Humans vs. Machines" presents customers with two competing cocktail sets: four dreamed up by the mortal minds of Axelrad's bartenders, and four created by the AI chatbot.

The Midtown bar is a hot spot among Houston's young and hip crowd, known for its great craft beer list, sprawling outdoor space with hammocks, and live music performances highlighting everything from cumbia to electropop.

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

Axelrad bartender Kenny Hopkins says owner Adam Brackman and the team were fascinated by "this AI chatbot that was threatening to take everyone's job." If ChatGPT can compose music and write essays, maybe it would be able to create cocktails worthy of a top Houston bar?

They started by making simple requests to ChatGPT, such as asking for a tropical drink, then became increasingly creative with their prompts. The staff spent a day making all the recipes the chatbot had given them.

"All the first ones it came up with were extremely sweet and kind of over the top," Hopkins says. "Kind of like something a robot would make."

An early experiment included Axelrad's bar staff asking ChatGPT if it could come up with a cocktail "that could be a perfect fit for an 8-bit princess." The bot's version of the Princess Peach cocktail mixes vanilla vodka with raspberry liqueur, cranberry juice, lime juice, simple syrup and edible gold glitter for garnish.

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

For Humans vs. Machines, running from March 1 to 31, they landed on four cocktails that are already very popular at Axelrad, and asked ChatGPT to make its own versions. If a customer orders one of the drinks, they'll be served two small pours of both the human and robot adaptation to compare, then be able to vote for their favorite via a QR code. At the end of the month, the votes will be tallied up.

"And if the machines win we're all fired," Hopkins said—jokingly, we think.

One of the cocktails chosen for this experiment is the Mango-rad-a, a mangonada-inspired Axelrad cocktail made with rum, mango nectar, mango syrup, lime juice, chamoy and Tajin. For the match-up, ChatGPT was prompted to make "a fruity frozen drink." It came up with a blend of rum, pineapple juice, coconut milk, lime juice and simple syrup for what will be on the menu as GPT's Island Bliss.

Humans vs. Machines will also have one non-alcoholic cocktail in the mix, so even those who don't drink booze can participate. Axelrad's spicy paloma mocktail (grapefruit juice, lime juice, serrano simple syrup, Squirt grapefruit soda and muddled serrano slices) will match up against GPT's Sweet Heat (mango nectar, lime juice, honey simple syrup, cayenne and paprika).

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

Axelrad Beer Garden's "Humans vs. Machines" event pits human bartenders against ChatGPT to create the best cocktails.

Hopkins thinks one way real bartenders have a leg up is through human interaction. Even the most talented professionals come up with their best drinks and need feedback from customers, which they will use to tweak the concoction to perfect it. He doesn't think ChatGPT could ever truly understand what makes something taste good—like something humans will enjoy.

Hopkins' main piece of feedback for ChatGPT? "It doesn't understand subtlety," he says. "Everything came out insanely sweet and really colorful. They all look crazy and neon. It's almost like it gave you things that would satisfy a child, but it doesn't have the nuance."

Cocktails must be balanced, with just the right amount of sweetness to acidity and booze to flavor. "It's the right ingredients but it doesn't know how to give you something that works on a human level," he adds.

Hopkins knows it's a working algorithm that takes feedback and aims to get better at the task at hand with time. He's even hopeful the bot could potentially help with idea generation. Some of ChatGPT's cocktails were actually quite successful once the team had experimented a bunch. But again, the software needs that human input and can't do it all on its own. Perhaps we will be spared by the robot takeover—for now.

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