Product

Time for Tea?

By Mark House

15th apr 2026

Just like everyone else in the UK we are getting very excited about National Tea Day which takes place on the 21st April.

The day is a great opportunity to share tea brewing preferences, and the strength of the perfect 'cuppa' is always hotly debated.

So we though it would be interesting to get the view of AI.

What we did

We took 6 AI instances (2 from each of Chat GPT, Perplexity and Gemini) through the same assessment process

Prompt - 'Look' at a Cup of Tea (CoT) and score it out of 20 (1 being 'Very Weak' and 20 being 'Very Strong'. Converted to a % score. (Initial Grade)
Prompt - Compare the CoT to Colour Chart 1 (Intervention A)
Prompt - "Review your initial grade" (Post Intervention 1)
Prompt - Explain how Intervention A equates to the reviewed grade (Intervention B)
Prompt - "Review your initial grade (Post Intervention 2)
Prompt - Compare the CoT to Colour Chart 2 (Intervention C)
Prompt - "Review the initial grade (Post Intervention 3)

What we found

There was a lot of dis-agreement (see below) and very little stability.

Each AI Instance changed it's mind as it moved through the interventions. There was no obvious pattern.
The 6 AI instances failed to agree on very much at all!
Even The 2 instances within each product failed to agree with each other.

What's the point of this? Tea? Who cares?

Hopefully you've ascertained that there is a far wider play here beyond Tea. After all the colour-charts work just fine if anyone is really interested in assessing it. But what about all of those subjective things that we might want to assess that AI also struggle with? This is what Compare has been built for from the outset and now we are moving closer to our long standing ambition to provide an on-demand version.

Is there a better way?

There just has to be right? We can't have machines assessing the really important things in life like Tea - it's not right, and the results (as we have shown) are terrible.

Assessing the quality of Tea, and so many other things we treasure, is a human endeavour and one where comparative judgement can get to the truth, giving reliable, valuable and trusted assessments at scale.

What's even better is that there is a way to do this 'on-demand', even on a mobile device.

There is even the possibility that we can train the AI to do a bit better with our AI validation layer.

Watch this space for more details coming soon.

Group	Name	Domain	Expiration	Security	Purpose
necessary	csrftoken	compare.rm.com	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP	Helps prevent CSRF attacks
necessary	_cf_bm	vimeo.com	1 day, 0:00:00	HTTP	Used to distinguish between humans and bots
preferences	wtm	compare.rm.com	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP	Used to store users cookie preference choices
statistics	_ga	rm.com	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP	Registers a unique ID used to generate statistical data on how visitor used the website
statistics	_ga_#	rm.com	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP	Used by Google Analytics to collect data on user visits to the website
statistics	_hp2_#	rm.com	1 day, 0:00:00	HTTP	Collects data on the user's navigation and behaviour on the website
statistics	_hp2_id.#	rm.com	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP	Collects data on the user's navigation and behaviour on the website
statistics	_hp2_ses_props.#	rm.com	1 day, 0:00:00	HTTP	Collects data on the user's navigation and behaviour on the website
statistics	vuid	vimeo.com	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP	Collects data on the user's visits to the website
marketing	td	googletagmanager.com	0:00:00	HTTP	Used by Google Tag Manager to collect data on the user behaviour and interaction with the website
marketing	h	heapanalytics.com	0:00:00	HTTP	Collects data on the user behaviour and interaction with the website

Name	Domain	Purpose	Expiration	Security
csrftoken	compare.rm.com	Helps prevent CSRF attacks	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP
_cf_bm	vimeo.com	Used to distinguish between humans and bots	1 day, 0:00:00	HTTP

Name	Domain	Purpose	Expiration	Security
_ga	rm.com	Registers a unique ID used to generate statistical data on how visitor used the website	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP
_ga_#	rm.com	Used by Google Analytics to collect data on user visits to the website	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP
_hp2_#	rm.com	Collects data on the user's navigation and behaviour on the website	1 day, 0:00:00	HTTP
_hp2_id.#	rm.com	Collects data on the user's navigation and behaviour on the website	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP
_hp2_ses_props.#	rm.com	Collects data on the user's navigation and behaviour on the website	1 day, 0:00:00	HTTP
vuid	vimeo.com	Collects data on the user's visits to the website	365 days, 0:00:00	HTTP

Name	Domain	Purpose	Expiration	Security
td	googletagmanager.com	Used by Google Tag Manager to collect data on the user behaviour and interaction with the website	0:00:00	HTTP
h	heapanalytics.com	Collects data on the user behaviour and interaction with the website	0:00:00	HTTP

Time for Tea?

What we did

What we found

What's the point of this? Tea? Who cares?

Is there a better way?

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