When the staff in a pub or bar is friendly and helpful, it adds to your enjoyment of the experience. Dealing with an unpleasant person serving your pint or margarita, on the other hand, has the potential to reduce your happiness significantly. For individuals who have a favorite drinking establishment, the bartender can even become a friend and confidant. “A bartender’s greatest achievement is his ability to precisely suit his customer,” said Harry Gordon Johnson, a prominent Canadian economist.

Those bartenders, on the other hand, may soon cease to be human. Cecilia is a robotic bartender who uses artificial intelligence (AI) to mix and serve cocktails and communicate with customers in the same way as Alexa on an Amazon Echo speaker or Siri on an iPhone can. The machine looks like a tall fruit machine, but it has a giant, upright television screen with an animated female barmaid named Cecilia on it.

You have the option of telling her what cocktail you want or ordering it on the touch-screen below and paying with your credit card or phone. After that, the drink is blended and prepared inside the vending machine before being brought to you in a glass. “Cecilia works on voice recognition and AI technology,” says Elad Kobi, CEO of Cecilia.AI, the Israeli firm behind the technology. He also said that companies needed technology and innovation to attract people.