Last spring, CellarTracker, a wine-collection app, built an artificial intelligence-powered sommelier to make unvarnished wine recommendations based on a person’s palate. The problem was the chatbot was too nice.
“It’s just very polite, instead of just saying, ‘It’s really unlikely you’ll like the wine,’” CellarTracker CEO Eric LeVine said. It took six weeks of trial and error to coax the chatbot into offering an honest appraisal before the feature was launched.
Since ChatGPT exploded three years ago, companies big and small have leapt at the chance to adopt generative AI and stuff it into as many products as possible. But so far, the vast majority of businesses are struggling to realize a meaningful return on their AI investments, according to company executives, advisers and the results of seven recent executive and worker surveys.