In Dubai, a pizza chain used ChatGPT to create a chicken pizza recipe. Given the success of the dish, the company is now offering its customers the chance to create their own pizzas using AI.
ChatGPT is also a pizza chef. As spotted by the BBC, Dubai’s Dodo Pizza came up with the idea of letting OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) create a unique pizza recipe. The goal was to design a dish that reflected the UAE city’s diverse tastes and cultural mix.
A bestseller
As a result, ChatGPT came up with a Shawarma pizza, a recipe that blends Middle Eastern, Indian and European cuisine. The ingredients include lamb, Indian paneer cheese, onions, za’atar spices, parsley and tahini sauce. On the brand’s website, it is sold for the equivalent of 8 euros in a small format and 17 euros in a large format.
“As a chef, I would never mix these ingredients on a pizza. But still, the combination of flavors was surprisingly good,” said Spartak Arutyunyan, the menu development manager of Dodo Pizza Dubai.
An original combination of ingredients, therefore, that the establishment has decided to put on the menu at the end of 2023. The brand has simply replaced the lamb with chicken, which is easier to obtain in the region.
And it is a success. It is one of the most popular pizzas among customers. “It was a huge success and is still on the menu,” Spartak Arutyunyan enthuses.
Similar experience in the United States
Faced with customer reactions, Dodo Pizza decided to take the concept even further. The brand now offers customers the opportunity to generate their own pizzas using artificial intelligence directly on its mobile application. Strawberries, date oil, blueberries and cereals have therefore been added to the menu to create ever more original combinations.
This is not the first time that AI has been used as a source of culinary inspiration. In the United States, Velvet Tacos in Dallas conducted a similar experiment by asking ChatGPT to design taco recipes. While many of the proposals did not convince the restaurant, a recipe for shrimp and steak tacos was selected. More than 22,000 tacos were sold in one week.
MIT researchers have also created PizzaGAN, an AI that can analyze a photo of a pizza to identify its ingredients and determine the order of the steps in its preparation. It thus allows users to recreate an identical pizza.
