“AI slop” may soon be available in liquid form, as yet one more forthcoming SF cafe is trying the robot barista idea, but also adding AI-generated art and music plus “tech-forward coffee” at the former Creamery space on Fourth Street.

It's a story SFist has reported countless times over the last ten-plus years, but it always ends the same way. We’ve seen startup-inspired local food and beverage ventures that thought they would change the world with their robot pizza makers, robot baristas, or robot smoothie makers. And what do all of these attempts have in common, other than use of robots? They all fail, generally unable to back up the robot hype with a product that offers consumers much quality.

But the tech industry will always care far more for what investors want than what consumers want, so here we go again. The SF Business Times reports that the former Creamery coffee shop spot at Fourth and King Streets is becoming another robot barista place, now dubbed Coffee Wafflee. And we suspect it will generate a cringe or two that the music and art there will be AI-generated, and the coffee is being described with the absolutely meaningless marketing term “tech-forward coffee.”

We do not want to root against Coffee Wafflee co-founders Matt Baker and Vance Bjorn. They once had that SoMa storefront broken into twice in a 24-hour period, and they’ve still stuck with SF. Their Silicon Valley Coffee company is generally well-reviewed. Their eponymous mini-waffles called “wafflees” and self-serve ice cream waffle cones might be hits that consumers love.

Here’s an example of a “robot barista” from the startup Artly that the cafe plans to utilize. The Business Times says the cafe will also have a room that’s “all about AI,” where “everything from the music to the lighting systems to graphics on a giant screen fed by customers' prompts is AI-generated.”

The notion, I suppose, is to recreate the tech industry meetup-spot magic that the Creamery used to have in the early 2010s. But the goal seems to be recreating that magic by hyping AI rather than, you know, selling a popular and unique product that consumers prefer to its competitors.

Though there may be a niche for people who genuinely prefer AI art and music to the real thing created by humans, what with all of the AI startups with money getting showered on them coming into that neighborhood.

So will Coffee Wafflee be a long-term success? We are confident in saying it will not, or at least, not at that Fourth and King streets address. That’s because the landlord, developer Tishman Speyer, is planning to tear the building down and put up a 435-foot apartment complex at that address in the years to come. Coffee Wafflee is not on a long-term lease there.

Related: Smoothie-Making Robot Arrives at Metreon, Robot Asks To Be Tipped [SFist]

Image: Coffee Wafflee via Facebook