Video: MITCSAIL

Tagging yourself in a picture is so 2017. With MIT’s software Pic2Recipe you take a photo of your food - which most of us would do anyway - and it will tell you exactly which ingredients your dish contains and what techniques went into preparing it. It’s still early days in development, but MIT is comfortable claiming a 65% success rate so far. When it’s finished, you’ll never have to worry about what you’re being served again.

Let me make a picture to see what’s in there.

Pic2Recipe: Predicting recipes from photos

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Video: Food Inspiration

One of the frontiers of A.I. in food is personalized nutrition. Habit out of San Francisco is an example. Habit provides its customers with an at-home test kit that measures how an individual reacts to proteins, fat, carbs, and other nutrients. The company then uses those results to construct a set of dietary and nutritional guidelines tailored to fit your exact needs. Habit believes our DNA will dictate many of our dietary choices in the future, leading to a healthier and vastly more balanced lifestyle.

Let’s make it a Habit

Habit, a DNA based diet

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Video: Ogilvy Paris

The new creative chef

IBM’s Chef Watson is a self-learning application which analyses food in a scientific way to come up with unique recipes. It searches for patterns in large datasets like the Bon Appetit website and matches ingredients and cooking techniques to come up with complicated and surprising flavour combinations. This way Chef Watson helps people make delicious and creative dishes Watson guides prospective chefs towards a recipe by following a set of steps. First you give Watson a few specific ingredients. Then it provides you with a variety of dishes to choose from. Finally, you choose the style of your dish. Watson then spits out a list of over a hundred potential recipes, from timeless classic to never before tried experiments. Then it’s up to you how safe you want to play it…

IBM Chef Watson E.A.T.S.

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Pepper is a humanoid robot and the result of a collaboration between Japanese SoftBank and Mastercard. Programmed as a waiter, Pepper processes orders, gives you product recommendations, and takes your payment via creditcard. Interacting with Pepper is like talking to a regular person. There’s no need to touch a tablet to process orders. Just treat Pepper like you would any waiter.

Hi, I’m Pepper and I’ll be your host for the evening

MasterCard Pepper Cafe

Video: Mastercard News

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California start-up Muso Robotics believes A.I. is the way to the consistently perfect burger. They developed Flippy, a robot that can see objects, measure temperature, and - of course - flip the  burger once it’s perfectly grilled on one side. Flippy just celebrated it’s first birthday and is now installed in its first Caliburger restaurant. Soon, Flippy will have a home in over 50 different Caliburgers.

Help me grill

"FLIPPY" the Kitchen Assistant

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Video: Miso Robotics

Video: Baidu Inc

How far will you let A.I. go, though? You might try this system for fun, but at the same time KFC now has your face in their database. They’ll always know what you’re looking to order, and they’ll be there the next time you visit, and every time after that.

KFC is on board with A.I. In Bejing they worked together with the Baidu Institute to design a system that predicts your order by facial recognition. Based on your face the system guesses your gender, mood, and age, and predicts your favorite menu items. It’s an interesting solution to long wait times and option overload.

Read my face

Baidu + KFC Facial Recognition Technology

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Interesting A.I. applications worldwide

 Floortje Ijssel de Schepper   Xiao-Er Kong

Everyday restaurants are slowly changing into high tech institutes designed to serve you at your best. Artificial Intelligence offers interesting opportunities for enhancing a dining experience. Creativity isn’t just chefs and plates anymore. A.I. opens up endless options of creating and serving.

FROM SMARTER THAN YOU TO A HELPING HAND