3 min read- Starbucks launched a beta Starbucks app in ChatGPT that recommends drinks based on your cravings, mood, or even a photo.
- I tested it two ways: once with my actual coffee preferences and once by asking it to match my outfit and the vibe of the day.
- The results were usable, but mostly very basic—and not enough to convince me I need AI choosing my coffee.
AI has become pretty hard to escape these days, whether you like it or not. It can be useful, sure, but it’s also a little terrifying. (I rewatched Terminator 2 recently on a date, so I’m keeping one eye on the robots.) Maybe you need recipe help. Maybe you’re blanking on Mother’s Day gift ideas. Maybe you want to make a fake missing poster of your friend because she hasn’t texted back in two days. Not that I’ve ever done that.
Now, Starbucks wants AI to help with your coffee order.
The company just launched the beta Starbucks app in ChatGPT, which, according to Starbucks, is meant to help people discover drinks based on their mood, cravings, or even a photo. You can describe the kind of drink you want, share the vibe you’re going for, and then customize and start an order in ChatGPT before finishing checkout in the Starbucks app or on Starbucks.com.
So I decided to see how well this thing actually understood me, especially as someone whose real Starbucks habits are not exactly over-the-top. I usually bounce between a venti iced coffee with the tiniest bit of almond milk and a Splenda or an iced Americano, black.
For my first test, I gave it what I thought was a pretty clear prompt: I wanted a large iced coffee-style drink, something caffeinated but not overly sweet, with almond milk or another nondairy option. I also told it I had a meeting later and didn’t want to get too jittery, and that I’d just gone to the gym and wanted a little protein if possible.
The app eventually landed on a Venti Iced Caffe Americano with almond milk, lightly customized with no more than one pump of sweetener. It also floated a few other options first, including Iced Espresso, and, weirdly, Iced Black Tea and Iced Green Tea, which felt like a miss considering I had very much said I wanted coffee. It did at least acknowledge that none of the drink choices were going to meaningfully solve the protein part and suggested pairing the coffee with a protein-forward snack instead.
That’s not bad advice, but it’s also not exactly revolutionary.
For round two, I tried to make the whole thing more fun. I sent details about my outfit—probably an inch-too-short black shorts, blue tank, scuffed up white sneakers—and said it was an 85-degree New York day, and that I’d be walking around Central Park with a man friend, so I wanted something summery, a little polished, and maybe intriguing enough to make him ask what I ordered. I also reminded it that I prefer nondairy milk and don’t like drinks that are too sweet.
This time, it picked Cold Brew with almond milk. It also gave me a ranking that included Iced Espresso, Iced Caffe Americano, Cold Brew, and Nitro Cold Brew. The write-up around the choice was actually kind of funny in how hard it tried to read me, describing cold brew as the most “effortlessly cool” option and the one that said I had taste without trying too hard.
And yet, my reaction was mostly… okay.
That was kind of the issue with both tests. The recommendations weren’t exactly offensive. They were just regular. So regular that I kept wondering why I needed AI to tell me about them at all. Maybe that’s because the feature is still in beta, or maybe I should have been even more specific and directly said I wanted the opposite of my usual order. But if the whole idea is that this tool can read your mood and translate it into something personalized, I was hoping for at least one suggestion that felt a little less like the most obvious answer on the board.
Is it a good tool for someone who doesn’t know the menu well or wants a starting point? I can see that. But as someone who is perfectly capable of choosing my own iced coffee, I don’t see myself outsourcing that job to a robot anytime soon.