Halfwheel, to suspend Charlie Minato as a reviewer
Halfwheel.com, a smaller online resource for cigar news and cigar reviews, has revealed to CNT in an exclusive that one of its many reviewers, Charlie Minato, was found to be using AI and an early form of ChatGPT to write his cigar reviews.
Cigar News Today looked at the reviews performed by Minato, and our only thought was, “Yea, that makes sense. We just thought he had the palate of a trash panda.”
“How else do you describe the flavors that Minato uses in his reviews?” Asked a senior member of the Halfwheel staff.
CNT attempted to reverse engineer a flavor wheel using the flavors and notes Minato has used in the past. We came up with nine base categories of flavors, the most significant three being, Refrigerator, Pantry and Gas Station. These were broken down into individual flavors ranging from Poultry, and Water, to no less than three different kinds of potato chips. Not to mention flavors from the smaller categories of Trash Cans and Construction Sites.
“The leap into technology that cigar manufacturers are making is interesting to watch. Old guys are trying to figure out how to work TikTok and Instagram, while some use NFTs to support a failing brand. Or just RFID chips and QR codes to tell the brand’s story. But this, this is just plain wrong.” Said the same member of the Halfwheel staff.
Halfwheel will not be removing the fake reviews from the site but has suspended Charlie from reviewing cigars until he completes a course of study using the ProPalate system made by Nick Cutro.