What Does Coca-Cola Y3000 Taste Like?
Created with the assistance of A.I., Coca-Cola’s latest flavor attempts to offer a taste of the future.
Photo courtesy of Coca-Cola
There’s been a lot of speculation about the artificial intelligence-driven future we’ve been told is just around the corner — or is perhaps already here. One thing you may not have thought to wonder is what the A.I.-driven future will taste like. Regardless, Coca-Cola has set out to provide an answer with the release of a new limited-edition flavor, Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar.
The new flavor, part of the soft-drink brand’s Limited Edition Creations series (its equally trippy predecessors include Starlight, Dreamworld and Ultimate) is being billed as “the first futuristic flavor co-created with human and artificial intelligence from Coca-Cola.”
The flavor is intended to celebrate “an optimistic future through the connections we make,” the brand says. To create it, Coca-Cola says it tapped into “human and artificial intelligence to understand how fans envision the future through emotions, aspirations, colors, flavors and more” and used these insights to “create the unique taste of Y3000.”
“Our ambition for Coca-Cola Creations is to create unexpected and magical moments for our fans. Inspired by the timelessness of Coca-Cola, we want to celebrate everyone’s idea of what the future might look like,” Oana Vlad, senior director of Global Strategy at The Coca-Cola Company, says in a news release announcing the arrival of the new beverage a couple of weeks ago. “With the help of AI-powered technology, Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar imagines how a Coca-Cola from the future could taste and introduces innovative experiences to explore the future.”
So what does our “optimistic future” taste like? We got a chance to try Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar and were sort of surprised to discover it smells and tastes more or less like the present-day diet colas we know and love, only maybe a little fresher? Were we imagining the hint of floral grassiness, unsuspectingly influenced by the pink-soap-bubble (“effervescent,” the company calls them) and fresh-field imagery Coke is including in promotional videos for the new flavor?
Curious about what others thought, we turned to social media, where Coca Cola invited people to share their responses to the new beverage:
One guy got notes of “space-age fruits and cosmic citruses” in Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar.
Another detected a “caramel undertone” and expressed disappointment. “It’s trying to be Coke, but it’s not Coke at the same time,” he said.
Yet another picked up an “artificial … clean freshness,” but mostly thought it tasted pretty much exactly the same as Diet Coke. “Go figure — they probably did just put the regular friggin’ recipe in here and say. ‘It’s so perfect it’s not going to change in the next thousand years.’ Wouldn’t that be the ultimate marketing gimmick?” he suggested.
Indeed, it would be.
Coca-Cola Y3000 Zero Sugar is available in the United States and Canada and in select other markets around the world. The full-sugar version is available only in the U.S. and Canada. So you can try it and reach your own conclusions. The future is now, friends.
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