Counterfeit whiskey crooks don’t stand a lick of a chance!
Scottish scientists are putting a new twist on artificial intelligence with an “artificial tongue” used to detect fake batches of booze, according to a report Tuesday.
The ground-breaking device — which can be used to sniff out counterfeit, or falsely advertised single-malt scotch — is portable and features 2 million tiny “artificial taste buds,” researchers told the UK Guardian.
“You could train your particular ‘tongue’ to know what one of these whiskies ‘tasted’ like, so that when the fake stuff came along it could identify it and when the real stuff came along it could confirm that it was the real stuff,” said Alasdair Clark of the University of Glasgow, which is developing the device with a team of scientists.
The small tile-like glass gadgets can also be used to identify poison and pollution in rivers, he said.
The “tongues” are coated with chemicals and contain gold and aluminium, which interact with light and the substance being tested, researchers said. It then provides a patterned measurement — or a “fingerprint” of the substance.
To test the device, the team drenched it in seven different single malt whiskies — including 12- and 18-year-old samples of Glenfiddich, 10-year-old Laphroaig and Glen Marnoch’s single malt — along with vodka, and ethanol in water.
They found that it produced a different pattern for each of the boozes.
Observers called the whiskey tester pretty, well, neat.
“Outstanding use of AI to protect the sanctity of whiskey,” one observer tweeted.
“They could have just asked me!” another quipped.
It wasn’t immediately clear when or if the gadget would hit the shelves.
(New York Times)
