Take “Teresa J Blair,” a prolific cookbook author who managed to publish four books in just twelve days during December 2023. Blair’s impressive output might seem extraordinary until you discover she doesn’t exist – she’s merely a digital construct churning out recipes at an inhuman pace.
The Dark Side of Digital Cooking
Copyright Concerns and Authenticity
The situation became personal for acclaimed author Joanne Lee Molinaro when she discovered an AI-generated knockoff of her Korean Vegan Cookbook. The impersonator’s work included non-vegan ingredients like eggs, dairy, and chicken in supposedly vegan recipes. Copyright protection for recipes remains a complex legal issue, as ingredient lists cannot be copyrighted, but specific instructions and descriptions can be protected.
Quality Control Nightmare
Paolo Rosson, author of “The AI Cookbook,” reveals the concerning limitations of AI-generated recipes. While experimenting with GPT-3, he encountered recipes calling for absurd quantities like two kilos of butter, highlighting the AI’s fundamental inability to understand practical cooking measurements.
Testing the AI Kitchen
The Good
Some AI-generated recipes can surprisingly work. Rosson’s “Sri Lankan currywurst curry,” despite its unusual fusion concept, proved unexpectedly successful. However, this success appears more coincidental than intentional, as AI lacks the ability to taste or validate its creations.
Bestselling food writer Rukmini Iyer emphasizes the crucial difference between AI-generated recipes and those created by professionals: “An AI hasn’t cooked and tested six recipes and compared them before coming up with its own.”
Economic Implications
The food industry’s adoption of AI technology extends beyond recipes into restaurant operations and product development. However, cook and food writer Ravneet Gill warns of a future where publishers might opt for AI-generated content with celebrity endorsements rather than paying authors proper compensation for their work.
The Human Element
Despite technological advances, the emotional connection to food remains uniquely human. Even Rosson acknowledges that knowing a recipe was created by AI diminishes its emotional value: “If I knew that a recipe was created by AI – even if I knew that it was meant to recreate my grandmother’s cake – it would mean less to me.”
