Recipes for romance

Culinary creativity makes food both a gustatory and a visual delight. Such skill used to belong to chefs but it is now being challenged by artificial intelligence.

The popular AI tool ChatGPT has inspired the virtual recipe assistant named Jeeves whose advantage is speed in preparing customized recipes and in sourcing ingredients. Jeeves can help novice cooks and foodies make a vegan protein muffin, for example.

Jeeves can generate a comprehensive list of ingredients for the recipe and teach how to make the oat flour, Tool.ai reports. Based on the ingredients, Jeeves also generates nutritional information and aligns it with dietary needs, as well as grocery lists to guide in the purchase of ingredients.

For baking, Jeeves will guide the baker every step of the way to ensure that the correct measurements and techniques are followed, according to Tool.ai. As to the finished product, the consumer is the ultimate judge if the vegan muffin meets their expectations.

For Filipino food, virtual reality developer Cristopher “Toph” David tapped ChatGPT versions 3 and 4 to create new recipes featuring variations of favorite local dishes. One result is Bukid Batala, a hearty stew made with mixed root crops (kamote, ube, and gabi) cooked in a tangy calamansi and coconut milk sauce and topped with crispy fried malunggay leaves, ANCX reported.

Another is Payanga, a dessert made with mashed ube and coconut milk flavored with panocha and pandan leaves and wrapped in a buri palm before being steamed. David also produced mouth-watering images of the new AI-generated recipes using the AI-powered graphics tool Midjourney.

More complex AI-generated recipes involved the collaboration of Japanese electronics firm NEC Corp. and bakery Kimuraya Sohonten Ltd. Using AI to promote pastries, the two companies created five flavors associated with romantic feelings.

The process entailed transcribing conversations of the cast members of online romance reality show, “Kyo Suki ni Narimashita” (Today, I Fell in Love). The 32 feelings generated were then matched with specific foods based on AI analysis of about 35,000 songs with lyrics that feature food like fruit and sweets, Asahi reported.

Kimuraya is now selling the end products dubbed RenAI or steamed breads laced with the flavors fateful encounter, first date, jealousy, tearful breakup and united lovers.

“We hope that people’s feelings of love will ferment and grow like the bread dough,” an NEC official said, according to Asahi.

The special buns will be sold in supermarkets for 200 yen ($1.35), including tax, in and around Tokyo starting 1 February, the Asahi report added.