AI-based Boba Shop, ‘Cha GPTea,’ Starts Using Coffee Instead

ArticlesCampusNews

Written by: Titus Chan

“This binary barista doesn’t make my coffee as well as the non-binary barista did,” said former MOM’s patron Mx. Presso.
Photo by Theo Erickson

An artificial intelligence-based startup company has recently partnered with the Rady School of Management to open Cha GPTea, a new boba shop located on UC San Diego’s campus, replacing the Middle Of Muir café. “The boba shop does not employ any human customers, instead opting to mix innovative AI technology with the popular tea beverage to create a unique and exciting experience for customers, without the need for human interaction,” said company spokesman Bard Lemon. “This will bring us to new frontiers in technolo-tea. All you have to do is go on our website and talk to our AI ‘Cha-bot’ so that it understands your personality and preferences, which it will then use to generate an order that you can pick up in store. Pretty sweet, huh?”

Cha GPTea claims its goal is to help promote diversity and bolster the social life on campus by appealing to a wide demographic of students and professors alike. Lemon hopes to facilitate conversations between Cha-bot and customers in order to teach the model to predict the connection between personality and boba orders. Copi Kopi, one of Cha GPTea’s software developers, stated, “We took special care to ensure a complete lack of human-to-human interaction during the ordering process, which we hope will keep our customers’ social batteries charged enough to speak to the other humans ordering their own custom, AI-generated beverages, here in our own physical storefront!”

Cha GPTea’s operating methods were quickly exploited by a group of MOM’s customers who were reportedly upset by the takeover of their favorite campus cafe. Students repeatedly engaged with the Cha-bot, convincing it that boba should use coffee instead of tea. One student allegedly bragged about their “chaotic boba endeavors” on the UCSD subreddit, claiming to have convinced the bot that “Caffeine is all the same thing, and it’s all good. So, isn’t it simply better to use coffee, which typically has higher caffeine content than tea?”

Because the Cha-bot is constantly being trained on its conversations with customers, the thousands of “troll” conversations have had a profound effect on the AI model. Many customers reported receiving coffee instead of tea as their boba bases, sparking intra-school outrage. “I typically hang out with my girl friends and get boba at 9 p.m.,” commented student Jan Campbell. “I just love being overwhelmed by sweetness until it feels like my teeth are going to pop, so getting my taste buds shocked instead with a wave of bitterness and then having to stay up until 4 a.m. is like so, so uncool.”

Other students, however, have expressed positivity towards the change in menu. “Caffeine, caffeine, caffeine! I can’t wait to consume more. You can never have too much pumping through your system!” said one computer science student who, according to friends and peers, had dark circles that looked “drawn-on with a sharpie.” Cha GPTea saw not only increased popularity among computer science students, but also increased attention from software engineers across the US, who reportedly started begging the company to open more stores in San Diego.

Cha GPTea CEO Sora Fan made the following statement in a press conference: “We are working with the County of San Diego to open more stores.While it appears that our model was a little tampered with, I believe it will be overall beneficial to keep it that way, since it has attracted many computer scientists. Who knows? Maybe San Diego will become the next Silicon Valley.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *