Home coffee brewers are known to concern themselves with precise variables, like grind size and brew time, in pursuit of the perfect cup. Today, they’re more likely than ever to have consulted large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity in their pursuits.
When it comes to AI (artificial intelligence), members of online coffee communities are seeing a familiar conversation play out. Someone—a new coffee enthusiast seeking advice, a professional fine-tuning brew recipes, or anyone in between—will share about using an LLM to guide their brews. In most cases, the commenters’ response tends to be overwhelmingly negative.
Yousef Jebai, an engaged member of the Standart community forum, a space for subscribers of the print publication Standart Magazine, says there are “many reasons” behind his opposition to AI in coffee. A Dutch/Lebanese artist, train conductor, and micro-roaster, Jebai views AI as antithetical to specialty coffee—and he doesn’t mince words about it.
“I dislike it for environmental reasons because it uses up an enormous amount of water, it destroys landscapes and takes away people’s homes,” he writes in an email. “I dislike it for creative reasons because it is a tool designed […] to ruin our ability to think critically. And I dislike it for human reasons because its point is to take away [especially] creative work.”
The coffee industry is facing a lot of changes, from extreme weather to aging farmers, infused coffee to robot baristas. On AI, consumer responses have been mixed: Some are aligned with Jebai, others are gung-ho on AI, and still others see shades of gray.
Editor’s Note: Because many AI terms are used interchangeably, a short list of working definitions for related terms can be found below.
The State of the AI Conversation
Since ChatGPT was released in November 2022, LLMs have become widely accessible, leading generative AI to become one of the most common ways we interact with AI tools. According to the 2026 AI Index Report from Stanford University, generative AI has reached 53% adoption among the global public within three years. For context, the report’s data shows the personal computer at about 20% adoption three years after its first mass-market product. Many who “despise” AI are required to use it in the workplace or in educational settings as part of “the new culture,” wrote one Reddit user.
Some coffee lovers are using LLMs as an entry-level sounding board. Others are publishing AI tools that advise, analyze, and give feedback; for example, one Hong Kong roaster’s pourover brew guide.
But while the overall number of AI users is rising, a number of those same users are also voicing their opposition. For example, according to a Gallup poll, over half (51%) of U.S. Gen Zers use AI at least once a week—a figure that remains steady even as feelings of anger and anxiety towards the technology intensify.
The public pushback, however, isn’t limited to one age group, and even unites people who would otherwise be on opposite political sides. It’s rooted in concerns about the value of human creativity and the data centers that power AI technologies, including environmental concerns about their enormous energy and water needs, as well as economic concerns like productivity and job loss. Some are skeptical about the use of AI to collect data or show ads.
Inside the Forum Debates
Online forums have become a major platform for people to express their discontent. In early 2026, one Reddit user posted on the subreddit r/Pourover about the “pretty good” results they achieved from using AI to recommend brewing tips. (A subreddit is a Reddit community that’s organized around a shared theme, also called a “sub.”)
More than half of the post’s commenters expressed negative sentiments on the connection between AI use and original thought (“Can’t even summon enough original thought to brew a cup of coffee oh my god”) and the desire to have an AI work-life balance (“I deal with enough AI at work, I prefer things to stay analog as much as possible in certain aspects of my life.”)
“It takes fairly little effort to learn how to brew properly and lots of roasters will publish a base recipe to go along with their bags,” wrote another user.
AI posts’ reception echoes another concern about outsourcing critical thinking to AI tools. Other posts, about consulting ChatGPT to assess their home batch roast or having more fun using a custom GPT “AI coffee coach,” faced similar backlash. However, some feel the community has been overly critical about the new technology.
For example, a commenter on the “AI coffee coach” post called out the tendency of other forum members to automatically condemn users who post about AI.
“I have also mentioned [ChatGPT use] in this sub and racked up a substantial negative response. While I have caught the model with inconsistencies and errors that need to be corrected, I have found it useful. Especially for helping with organizing information. […] Almost any mention of AI on this forum is immediately attacked,” the user wrote.
“As an Artist Myself, I Have No Tolerance for Generative AI”
With AI permeating into so many industries, it makes sense that it’s filtered into coffee. But in industries based on handicraft and community, the conversation carries extra weight and nuance. In coffee, humanity intersects with every piece of the value chain, from harvesting coffee cherries to holding a steaming mug in your hands.
This is largely what attracted Jebai to coffee back in 2022. “I was looking for a new hobby to enrich my life, and I fell in love with the ritual, the community and complete nerdiness of specialty coffee,” he writes in an email. Jebai does not knowingly use AI but says he learns a lot from participating in online communities. “Since January 2026 I started roasting coffee as well, and that has made me even more eager to learn.”
In the Standart forum, Jebai has often responded to posts mentioning AI experiments, including those where other members discuss using ChatGPT for brew recipes.
“As an artist myself, I have no tolerance for generative AI,” he says. So Jebai commented on a post featuring multiple AI-enhanced images of coffee shops challenging the author on their use of generative AI in images they claimed were their own. But he says that the conversation—which continued in private messages—ultimately wasn’t productive.
Jebai also dislikes posts about apps that use AI to calculate brew recipes—either because they are “AI-made, which takes all the creativity out of them,” or because they overshadow the work of “truly talented people” who have created brewing resources. But he no longer sees the point in responding to the authors. “I don’t think [they’re] open to changing their minds,” he says.
“The Bot Iterated Based on My Tasting Notes”
Despite pushback, a parallel dynamic is emerging: the “AI is here to stay” argument, which encourages society to reconcile with the new technology.
In the coffee community, many remain cautiously open to AI. Damir Zekić, a software engineer and home barista based in Málaga, Spain, says he changed his mind about AI after a friend shared their own positive experience and he experimented with consulting an LLM for his own brews. He still acknowledges the many ethical, social, and personal concerns, like remembering that LLMs are “not a human and not a friend.”
“I was skeptical against asking AI for a recipe for a coffee for a long time,” Zekić wrote in the Standart forum, in response to a July 2026 post called “Am I going AI-crazy?”. The post’s author expressed ambivalence about accepting what they see as good advice from ChatGPT when they love the “analog” work of coffee. (Editor’s Note: The author of this article, also a forum member, has gotten Zekić’s explicit permission to use his comments.)
His own experience was similar to the situation described in the forum post, and involved a small batch of expensive coffee. “I wanted to get the best of it. I wasn’t happy with [the LLM’s] first suggestion, but the bot iterated based on my tasting notes, which a YouTube video can’t do.” Zekić says he found its suggestions and reasoning useful: “Ah, so that changes when I pour water faster!”
After experimenting, Zekić says he doesn’t see much of a difference between following a recipe on YouTube and asking an LLM for one.
Drawing Their Own Lines
While we’ve always used technology to support coffee experimentation, widespread AI adoption is forcing coffee lovers to draw their own lines in the sand. Jebai believes that AI can be “genuinely beneficial” in medicine and research, where machine learning models are now used to assess medical conditions and risks via images and voice recordings. But in coffee?
“I think [LLMs] eliminate the need for active learning, reflection, and exploration of what exactly one enjoys about coffee. […] Specialty coffee demands attention, care,…and curiosity,” he says.
Jebai continues, “There’s a deep joy in discovering through one’s own efforts what kind of brewing method works for what coffee. And yes, sometimes that means frustration and wasting some coffee beans, but the reward is so much greater than the frustration experienced.”
For him, it all comes down to intention. “I don’t want to tell others what to do, but I would like others to be more conscious of why they are deciding to take certain shortcuts,” he says.
Zekić lands somewhere in the middle. “My experience is that [AI] didn’t take anything away from me, I would even say I learned something. […] I think LLMs are a tool and I’m not dismissive about them for brewing (anymore),” he wrote in the Standart forum.
Ultimately, both home brewers are still seeking community, and they’re far from alone.
In October 2026, Jebai posted on the Standart forum offering to send his sample roasts to other members; he quickly ran out due to high interest. In another post, he shared the photos his partner took for his new website, acknowledging the community’s role in his coffee journey. “This feels like the right place to share them,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, Zekić points out that most of the ways we seek learning and feedback—whether on sample roasts or brewing methods—are now digital. “Journaling coffee brews on paper (or in an app) is useful, but there’s no guidance. You can write down the variables you used […] and try to be creative about what to try next. But if one lacks experience and/or knowledge then maybe chatting with an LLM helps,” Zekić wrote.
“Is that worse than asking a random person on the internet to help you? I honestly don’t know.”
Working definitions for terms in this article:
Artificial Intelligence (AI): a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent, human-like behavior by computers
Machine learning: artificial intelligence algorithm that allows a computer to learn to perform tasks by ingesting data, without being explicitly programmed; for example, an algorithm that can recognize and classify which pictures in a dataset are dogs or cats
Generative AI: artificial intelligence tools that are capable of generating new content, including text, images, audio, and video
Large language model (LLM): a machine learning program that makes generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini possible. LLMs are trained on large datasets of text, which then allows them to predict and construct text
