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Like everyone else, I’m a little obsessed with the arrival of artificial intelligence bots—also known as A.I. chatbots—but specifically ChatGPT, a tool that debuted in November 2022 from the research lab OpenAI.
It’s a fun toy to play with, but as a journalist, it has me a little on edge. Especially as someone who writes spirits reviews, an easily recognizable form of writing that’s widely available online, am I at risk of being replaced by an A.I. chatbot? I’m on a mission to find out.
What Is ChatGPT?
If you’re not familiar with ChatGPT, it’s a bot that automatically generates text in response to short prompts. ChatGPT provides answers based on text harvested from the internet. Users have noted how natural and human-sounding the responses read. So much so that universities are worried students will use the chatbot to write term papers and it’s already been used to write computer programs and poems. But can it be used to write critical reviews—a core Wine Enthusiast feature?
Can a Bot Write a Better Review Than a Human?
To find out, I fed a few prompts into ChatGPT. “Write a whiskey review,” I typed. The results were generic, and they certainly didn’t sound anything like me. So, I added a little extra info to see if the bot could get to know me a little better. (Note: I kept the default length at a maximum of 64 characters, which abruptly cuts off some of the text.)
I prompted it, “Write a whiskey review by a journalist.”
