Coca-Cola is Now Integrating AI for Products and Services

Popular beverage manufacturer, Coca-Cola, has joined the AI train. According to a report by Fox Business, the soda giant has begun to integrate AI into various verticals within the company, primarily focusing on improvements of products and services to customers.

This news came to light as the company’s first-quarter earnings report was released. In it, Coca-Cola highlighted how it was looking to adopt new and emerging technology, such as AI. Their chief reasoning? According to the earnings report, it is to “drive new approaches, more experimentation and improved speed to market.” This isn’t new for a major food and beverage industry player.

Last year, Chipotle announced an AI-powered kitchen test run of an AI-powered kitchen to help staff manage rushes, and inventory, and optimize customer services by taking on logistic duties and creating notifications to assist staff on their shift. One cool benefit is also that the AI makes tortilla chips.

But what makes Coca-Cola different? Well, it seems that the company is looking to partner with OpenAI and the consulting firm Bain & Company to see what DALL-E and ChatGPT can do. Their goals for those programs are, “to enhance marketing capabilities and business operations and to build capabilities through cutting-edge [AI].”

Part of this is to assist in improving distribution network operations and overall, “to improve customer service and ordering as well as point-of-sale material creation in collaboration with its bottling partners.”

This isn’t the only avenue that the beverage maker is exploring when it comes to AI. Coca-Cola also launched the “Create Real Magic” platform. Though closed since March 31st, the competition allowed artists, using DALL-E and GPT-4 to create original art pieces.

As you’d expect, Coca-Cola’s main rival, Pepsi has no plans on being left behind. Since late 2021, the company has looked to AI as a means to tackle a variety of issues. Some of these include logistical issues, data, sustainability, and model prediction.

So it seems that the cola wars aren’t over. Instead, each company is looking to AI as a means of paving their path toward the future.