Keurig Uses AI To Help You Break The Ice At Thanksgiving Dinner

The AI-powered conversation starter gives you an ice breaker no matter the awkward topic with anyone you might run into while home for the holidays

Keurig has launched an OpenAI-powered tool that delivers situation-specific, humorous prompts to help people ease into conversation during awkward moments this holiday season. 

The website asks users to input who they’re talking to and what they’re being asked about, and uses generative artificial intelligence to deliver a clever icebreaker that will get the conversation going. Whether running into an ex, dealing with a nosey aunt, or sparing with annoying siblings, the AI generator can provide the perfect conversational segue to get those home for the holidays out of their least favorite topics to talk about. 

Keurig partnered with influential content creator and comedian Jake Shane to launch the campaign. Creative ideation and execution was led by Social Transformation company, 1000heads. 

“I am a big advocate for using AI to expand human creativity rather than replace it,” said Moa Netto, Head of Creative at 1000heads.

“If you think about the scale of this project, predicting every possible awkward family moment and generating thousands of clever suggestions to break the ice would have been impossible. A lot of creative energy was spent on creating copy samples to train the AI, devising a ‘formula’ for content output, honing the AI with ratings and improved suggestions, and finding the right tone and comedian influences. Once it was set up, we’re freed from the manual labor and the idea can reach its full potential. Maximizing impact is always a great outcome for creativity,” said Netto. 

Recent reports have shown that iced coffee beverages continue to be on a multi-year rise in colder months, even surpassing hot fall favorites like the pumpkin spice latte. The K-Iced brewer was released by Keurig earlier this year to meet the growing demand for year-round iced beverages, especially among younger consumers. 

Specifically, college students are huge fans of the latest iced coffee trend, with one of their biggest dorm brew hacks being to lean on their Keurig machines.

“For students, the holidays offer a welcome break from studies and a chance to reconnect with friends, but they can also bring a barrage of common cringe-worthy interactions. Students get pulled out of their routine independence and plopped into awkward social situations and scenarios teeming with new familial expectations. It can certainly be tough to navigate!” said Jenn Eakin, Associate Creative Director at 1000heads. “Combining this relatable insight with a bit of empathy, humor, and creative engineering is a task that our team thoroughly enjoyed playing with these past couple of months.”