Report: Craft Beer Competition Derailed by AI

There are many reasons to be wary of generative AI these days, from the unsettling way people use it to duplicate the likenesses of dead celebrities to the lawsuits connecting AI chatbots to the deaths of multiple people. Even as some AI boosters advocate for new uses for the technology, skeptics debate the jobs AI is unlikely to attempt. You might think, for instance, that tasting food or beverages is something that requires a human palate. And you’d probably be correct — a recent controversy over a craft beer competition notwithstanding.

In an unsettling report at 404 Media, Joseph Cox detailed the controversy that erupted when the people running one beer competition decided to throw AI into the mix. The competition in question was the 2025 edition of the Canadian Brewing Awards. As Cox reports, several days into the competition, the judges were instructed to do something unexpected: instead of using the competition’s existing system, they were told to use a new AI-powered system for their notes.

404 Media reports that the app then converted those tasting notes into a description of the beer. Based on what one judge told Cox, the AI doesn’t seem to have done a good job of creating work human felt comfortable endorsing.

Earlier this year, Greg Loudon — one of the judges — wrote a lengthy open letter expressing frustration with the organization responsible for the awards and Best Beer, the AI-powered tool in question. “When concerns about the use of AI were brought to Best Beer, they shrugged it off,” Loudon wrote.

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As Cox reports, pushback from within the industry seems to have led to a change in direction for the Best Beer initiative. Two weeks ago, the Canadian Brewing Awards posted an update on Instagram stating that the current maangement was “stepping away from running the CBAs and returning the company to its original founders.” They have also pledged to donate the Best Beer “assets” to a nonprofit and will “be opensourcing the code base for everyone.”

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Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…