"As a chef, I wouldn't mix these ingredients ever on a pizza, but still, the mix of flavors was surprisingly good."

Everything Pizza

A chef in Dubai used OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT to come up with a pizza recipe — and as it turns out, it started selling like hotcakes.

Spartak Arutyunyan, head of menu development for the international pizza chain Dodo Pizza, told the BBC that the resulting recipe "was actually a huge hit, and it's still on the menu."

In a bid to reflect Dubai's culinary traditions, ChatGPT went all out, suggesting a wild mix of ingredients. The recipe includes "Arab shawarma chicken, Indian grilled paneer cheese, Middle Eastern Za'atar herbs, and tahini sauce," according to the report.

In simple terms, the chatbot decided to create a cross-cultural hodge podge of flavors to be thrown together on a pizza rather than anything particular original. Regardless, it seems to have struck a nerve.

"As a chef, I wouldn't mix these ingredients ever on a pizza, but still, the mix of flavors was surprisingly good," Arutyunyan told the BBC.

Image Credit: Dodo Pizza

The Menu's Rejects

Arutyunyan revealed that other ChatGPT recipes didn't make the cut, including a pizza topped with strawberries and pasta, or a pie featuring blueberries and breakfast cereal.

We've already come across several lazy attempts to cash in on the AI hype in the culinary world. Last year, for instance, a dubious "bespoke smoothie shop" called BetterBlends in San Francisco closed down after its hyper-personalized smoothie recipe business failed to catch on.

A taco shop in Dallas also dabbled with generative AI — with equally mixed results.

Velvet Taco culinary director Venecia Willis told the BBC that ChatGPT spat out some "funky combinations."

"I think AI is a great tool to use when you're in a bit of a creative slump, to get the brain going again — ‘that combination might actually work, let's try it,'" she said. "The AI can suggest something maybe I wouldn't have thought of."

Other experts were far more skeptical of the use of AI chatbots in the kitchen.

"If you can get ChatGPT to spit out something that looks like a recipe, then it's because there are recipes on the internet," outspoken AI critic and University of Washington linguistics professor Emily Bender told the BBC.

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