AI Writing Better Recipes

Can AI Write Recipes Better Than Humans?

By The New York Times, November 9, 2022

A reporter, Priya Krishna, put AI recipes to the test.

Can artificial intelligence create a better Thanksgiving menu than people can?

Credit: Timothy O'Connell/The New York Times

Recipes can be passed down by word of mouth, scribbled on index cards, published in cookbooks. But they've always had one thing in common: They're made by people.

Few things, in fact, are as packed with humanity as a recipe. Mixed and folded and baked into each one are their creators' backgrounds, stories, tastes and feelings.

People have their limitations, though. They can't read every mashed potato recipe on the internet before coming up with their own version. They can't analyze thousands of techniques in search of the best way to make a pie crust.

Machines can. Computer systems driven by artificial intelligence can compose tweets and blog posts, create art, even generate computer code. And now they're starting to write recipes.

From The New York Times

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AI Creating Dinner from Your Pantry

An area we looked at with AI solutions when we were still in the food business, talked to IBM when they were having Watson 'cook' and invent recipes.  The idea of assembling something from a recipe and script can also be generalized for anything that requires resources and process that you want to do efficiently.   

Can artificial intelligence create a decent dinner?    By Nell Mackenzie  in the BBC

It is the night before the weekly shop. I look in the fridge and consider my three tomatoes, the sweet potato and the asparagus.

Normally, I’d take this as my cue to nip to the fish and chip shop.  However, I’m trying out Plant Jammer, an app that promises to rustle up a recipe based on whatever food you have lying around, using artificial intelligence.

It searches three million recipes to find often-paired items. It then consults a library of ingredients that the company has hired professional chefs to group by flavour - salt, umami, sour, oil, crunch, soft, sweet, bitter, spicy, fresh and aroma.

Finally, the software learns from this data and devises new recipes.  ... ' 

Sony, CMU looking at Cooking Robots

The idea of further looking at task oriented interaction with recipes, techniques and recipes.  As a long time cook, and having worked in the Food industry.  Also involves close cooperation with people.  Been examining how assistants work with recipes.  Its a natural place to think about AI.  Lots of data, understood goals, sub-tasks and resources readily defined. 

Sony, Carnegie Mellon form partnership to research cooking robots
The skills needed for food preparation and delivery could be applied to a number of other industries and tasks, Sony and CMU said.      By Stephanie Condon for Between the Lines

Sony, Carnegie Mellon Form Partnership to Research Cooking Robots 

" ... Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Sony are working together to study how artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics can be used to improve food preparation, cooking, and delivery. The researchers want to teach machines to handle fragile and irregularly shaped materials, skills that could be applied to other household or small business tasks. The project, which be run primarily out of CMU's School of Computer Science, has the potential to make the vast possibilities of AI and robotics more familiar and accessible to the general public, according to project lead Hiroaki Kitano, president and CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories. ... " 

Adding Intelligence to Ad Delivery

Interesting that the 'Show' version of Alexa, with a screen,  is attracting advertisers.  Consider that this can add intelligence for the consumer with the delivery of adds.   Images are likely expected. Video in particular.   Here am talking about the process that the consumer might need to use the product.   Food recipes are an obvious example.   DIY products and services as well.   Via specifically designed skills to support the message.   A form of engagement with value exchange.   Others?

Scripps, Time Inc. Among Media Companies Starting Shows on Amazon's New Echo  By Garett Sloane in Adage

Streaming video services are sometimes called "over the top" because they skip over the cable box to reach consumers. Now publishers are going over the counter top with original programs for the new Amazon Echo that comes with a screen.

On Wednesday, Scripps Networks Interactive' Food Network and Time Inc.'s People introduced apps for the device, called the Amazon Echo Show.  .... " 

Algorithmic Gastronomy and Beyond

Fascinating look about how to morph recipes.  Might this be used to rewrite other process + ingredient kinds of decisions?  We were influenced in coffee blending and roasting decisions by recipe style approaches.  There is something here.

Deep Learning Algorithm Rewrites Traditional Recipes for New Regions, Ingredients
by Michael Byrne

 Algorithmic gastronomy is here.

Imagine your favorite go-to recipe mutated to conform to the traditional methods and ingredients of any number of diverse regional food cultures. Consider, say, lasagne, but a sort of lasagne that's instead a naturally occurring part of Japanese or Ethiopian cuisine. Not "fusion," but something deeper—a whole rewriting of what a lasagne even is according to the culinary traditions of some other place.

It's not necessarily an easy or natural thing to do, but a new machine learning algorithm developed by a team of French, American, and Japanese researchers offers an automated solution based on neural networks and large amounts of food data. The result, which is described in a paper published this month to the arXiv preprint server (via I Programmer), is a system that can take a given recipe and shift it into an alternative dietary style—sushi lasagne, say—as well as parse a recipe for its underlying style components.  .... " 

Google Home Follows Conversational Recipes

Following a cooking recipe is a simplified kind of conversation.   The assumed script is something that has been standardized over time. There are ingredient list and quantities,  cooking instructions,  Serving instructions.  Then there are are comments/assumptions on the script.  Potential substitutions, alternative methods, techniques, visuals,  ...  And then there are interactions of various sorts, which depends on how experienced a cook you are.  But it all starts with  a few simple lists.  At the end perhaps some helpful hints, like serving quantities. So this is a good place to start thinking about useful conversations and their context.

Google Home just added a 'skill' for cooking. You can ask it for a recipe via search,  or find one of your via search and send it to the Google Home App.  It interprets it, and then you can start following the recipe. So it really supports recipe browsing.

Amazon Echo has had a similar recipe reciting capability for sometime.  It has a far shorter list of recipes derived from Allrecipes, but those alone are quite complete.  Amazon does not support easy recipe browsing.

In each system you no longer need to load the skill.  Just ask some questions that imply you are interested in cooking recipes.   And off you go.  More details of the experiment below:

Recipes for Training and Understanding Delivery

In Adage:

Why Martha Stewart Doesn't Feel Sorry for Media Companies
Mogul Talks Facebook Live, Future of Magazines and the 'Advertiser Dilemma'  .... 

Fascinating piece on how Martha Stewart is experimenting with Facebook to produce demonstrations of cooking, crafts etc.    As an amateur chef myself have always thought about the model of the 'food recipe' for training.   A recipe consists of a statement of resources,  skills,  context and process.    And a means to economically deliver it and then to measure its effectiveness.   Could be used beyond that for other kinds of training as well.   She talks also about other advertising media changes.

Campbell's Recipes Via Amazon Echo

Campbell Soup to partner with Amazon  Echo to provide recipes.  The Echo kitchen support functions are still very primitive, will be interesting to see recipes are provided.  Sign up here.  I am hoping this will be more interesting than what it sounds like.  But OK, I am a cook and ready for something creative.  Please.