Moët Hennessy Wine Estates (MHWE), the wine division of LVMH, has launched an interactive AI sommelier, able to talk buyers through wine recommendations, trained on its extensive in-house expertise.
The technology, called ‘Divine’, currently takes the form of a warm and witty ‘living painting’, which interacts via speech in real life.
However, MHWE plans to develop the Divine technology into other applications in stores and online, making it easy for consumers to understand more about choosing wine. Divine was created with Paris-based creative and technology agency Swipe Back.
Divine runs on GPT4 technology, but was trained with a unique data set: the expertise from all of MHWE’s wineries, including Cloudy Bay in New Zealand, Ao Yun in China, Bodega Numanthia in Spain, Joseph Phelps in the US, Terrazas de los Andes in Argentina, and Chateau d’Esclans, Chateau Galoupet and Minuty in France.
Although Divine’s recommendations were primarily MHWE wines, is also able to have wide ranging conversations about wine and champagne world. Divine has debuted at the VIvatech show in Paris, attracting huge attention and making it into the ‘Top 5’ list of innovations at the show.
Divine’s food pairing recommendations were also designed with the help of Oriane Derville, MHWE’s global training manager.
The artwork side of Divine was built using Unreal Engine, the technology behind film and TV shows such as The Mandalorian, and games including Final Fantasy, and the basis for the face of Divine used Metahuman technology.
Divine was debuted at VivaTech 2024 in Paris in May, and more outings are planned for her soon. During the four days of VivaTech, Divine answered more than 5000 questions. More outings are currently being planned for Divine.
Tatiana Lupart, digital and consumer engagement director at MHWE, who leads the central team for digital innovation, said:
“Creating digital, and physical/digital, experiences that resonate with younger generations are part of the best ways to engage them on their own terms and within platforms they already know and love. Now more than ever, immersion and interactivity are mandatory in the relationships they want to develop with their favourite brands.
“We created Divine as a consumer-first experience to explore the world of wine with personalised recommendations. Interacting with Divine is the epitome of the approachable and forward thinking experience we strive for at MH Wine Estates.
“The painting interface is huge fun - and Divine’s design is the final piece - Swipeback have not just created something new and innovative, but also a beautiful piece of interactive digital art.”
Nikhil Roy, co-founder and creative director at Swipe Back, added:
“Wine can be a huge source of pleasure for many - but for the non-initiated, it can be complicated and hard to understand. The aim with this project was to find new and engaging ways to bring people in, who might otherwise lack confidence in choosing.
“This has also been a fantastic test case - we’ve used a really deep, proprietary data set to make a tool that is not only fun, with multiple applications for MHWE, but show’s what’s possible using AI technology in different, specialised ways. So many companies have huge data sets that remain difficult to understand, access or digest - and Divine is a great example of how information like this can be brought to life.”
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