Welcome to the Meals AI Weekly Bulletin, our new weekly wrapup that highlights essential happenings on the intersection of AI and meals.
These days, there’s numerous noise round how AI is altering meals, so we determined to create a weekly temporary to convey you what’s essential, decipher by way of all of the noise, and ship actionable insights. In the event you’d like to enroll in our weekly Meals AI Weekly, you are able to do so right here.
Highlights
Is AI Ruining Restaurant Evaluations? A brand new research reveals folks can not distinguish between actual and AI-generated opinions.
AI Meals Artwork Is All over the place (And It’s Not Nice for Freelancers) Generative AI instruments like Midjourney and DALL-E are revolutionizing meals imagery, however what does this imply for freelancers and creatives who historically offered these providers?
First, Al Michaels. Subsequent, How About an AI-powered Anthony Bourdain? The information of Al Michaels permitting AI to duplicate his voice has nearly everybody freaking out, however what does it imply for the way forward for AI-generated avatars of well-known meals personalities?
Swallowing A Robotic. Endiatx has developed the Pillbot, a tiny robotic that may be swallowed to discover the gastrointestinal tract, probably revolutionizing diagnostics and customized diet.
Meals & Vitamin Centric LLMs Might Be an Investible Alternative. VCs see potential in industry-specific AI fashions, notably within the domains of biology, chemistry, and supplies, as these specialised LLMs might provide distinctive funding alternatives.
Brightseed’s Forager AI Finds Novel Bioactives. Cranberry big Ocean Spray groups up with Brightseed to uncover new bioactive compounds in cranberries.
Our Favourite AI Meals Artwork of the Week. We’ll be making this an everyday function. In the event you’d like your artwork featured, submit it on our Spoon slack.
We’re going to be exploring all of this at our Meals AI Summit in September. Be part of us gained’t you? Tremendous Early Hen pricing expires on the finish of this month.
Is AI Ruining Restaurant Evaluations?
What occurs when people can’t inform actual restaurant opinions from faux ones? The restaurant {industry} has begun asking itself this query as a tidal wave of pretend AI opinions floods on-line websites.
In response to Yale professor Balazs Kovacs, people are already shedding their capacity to discern the actual from the faux. Kovacs lately unveiled the outcomes of a research demonstrating AI’s capacity to imitate human-written restaurant opinions convincingly. For his take a look at, Kovacs fed Yelp opinions into GPT-4 after which requested a panel of human take a look at topics whether or not they might inform the distinction. At first, the outcomes generated by GPT-4 had been too good, so Kovacs then prompted GPT-4 to insert “
Whereas this raises apparent issues in regards to the authenticity of on-line opinions and the trustworthiness of consumer-generated content material, it shouldn’t be shocking. Determine 01’s human-like speech tics had been creepy, however largely due to how human its awkward dialog appeared. With typos and sub-par grammar—in different phrases, what we see day-after-day on social media—it is sensible that AI-generated opinions appeared extra human.
One potential workaround to this drawback of AI-generated opinions is utilizing AI to detect and notify us what faux content material is, however early assessments present that even AI can’t inform what’s actual and what’s faux. One other suggestion is to require reviewers to have bought a product to assessment it (much like having Amazon labels whose opinions are from verified purchasers) and apply it to eating places. My guess is that this would be the finest (and probably final) line of protection in opposition to the approaching tidal wave of AI opinions.
AI Meals Artwork Is All over the place (And It’s Not Nice for Freelancers)
One early software of generative AI, because it applies to meals, is the creation of photos. Midjourney, DALL-E, and different instruments permit us to create immediate lifelike photos with a couple of sentences. Consequently, we’ve seen CPGs, meals tech software program corporations, and restaurant tech startups soar on the generative artwork development.
Whereas that isn’t essentially excellent news for precise artists (this WSJ article is a must-read in regards to the influence of AI on freelancers and creatives), these instruments have democratized professional-ish like pictures and artwork for folk in the identical approach Canva made professional-style graphics and shows obtainable to anybody.
One firm that’s benefitted considerably is Innit. The corporate, which centered in its adolescence on hiring movie star cooks like Tyler Florence and spending tens of hundreds on photograph shoots for a recipe, is now whipping them immediately with generative AI for its Innit FoodLM.
Whereas most Web-savvy advertising and marketing sorts at meals manufacturers, eating places, and different food-related companies have at the very least realized to dabble in generative AI immediate engineering, that hasn’t stopped some from making an attempt to create a enterprise out of it. Lunchbox created an AI meals picture generator using DALL-E because the underlying LLM over a yr in the past (the web site has since gone darkish), and simply this week I acquired pitched on a brand new AI-powered meals generator that desires to cost for its service (which is actually a person interface to handle immediate engineering for an underlying LLM (which most probably is Midjourney or GPT-4). There’s possible a small lifespan for a lot of these providers, however my guess is most advertising and marketing of us will be taught to immediate engineers instantly with in style picture mills like Midjourney.
First, Al Michaels. Subsequent, an AI-Powered Anthony Bourdain?
The Web freaked out yesterday when information broke that Al Michaels has agreed to let an AI copy his voice, and rightly so. First off, it’s creepy. Second, that is the precise factor was the principle cause the Hollywood writers and actors guilds saved putting for therefore lengthy, so I’m guessing the Hollywood artistic neighborhood isn’t precisely proud of Al. And eventually, it goes to indicate you that if you happen to throw sufficient cash at us people, the temptation to cave to the bots will likely be an excessive amount of.
My guess is we’ll ultimately see AI-generated avatars of well-known cooks. All it might take is for the property of Julia Youngster or Anthony Bourdain to get a ok provide and it gained’t be lengthy earlier than we hear (and perhaps see) their avatars.
Swallowing A Robotic
In response to Venturebeat, Endiatx has developed a microscopic robotic that may traverse your physique and is provided with cameras, sensors, and wi-fi communication capabilities. The robotic, known as Pillbot, permitting docs to look at the gastrointestinal tract and be used each for diagnostic and therapeutic functions.
The corporate’s CEO, Torrey Smith, has taken 43 of those Pillbots and swallowed one dwell on stage, which could be seen right here. If this know-how really works (and people capsules could be made smaller as a result of, holy cow, that’s a literal huge capsule to swallow), it’s not onerous to think about these getting used to dial in and optimize customized diet regimens.
Meals & Vitamin Centric LLMs Might Be an Investible Alternative
Enterprise Insider requested some VCs what they’re bored by in terms of AI and what they’re enthusiastic about. Not surprisingly, they talked alot about how will probably be onerous for startups to interrupt by way of in foundational massive language fashions, the place huge gamers like Open AI and Google play. And like several good VC an early market they talked up up picks and shovels
At the same time as buyers shift their focus to promising AI infrastructure startups, there should still be some alternatives for brand new LLM startups to win, particularly once they’re educated for particular industries, defined Kahini Shah, a principal at Apparent Ventures.
“We’re enthusiastic about what we name Generative Science at Apparent, i.e, massive, multi-modal fashions educated in domains corresponding to biology, chemistry, supplies,” she stated.
Brightseed’s Forager AI Finds Novel Bioactives
Brightseed, an organization that makes use of AI to speed up bioactive and meals compound discovery, introduced that it has (in partnership with Ocean Spray) used its Forager AI to uncover novel bioactive compounds in cranberries. Forager recognized a number of bioactives, corresponding to terpenes, which Brightseed believes maintain important potential for human well being. These findings, based mostly on in silico analyses, will endure additional scientific validation and will likely be introduced on the American Society of Vitamin’s NUTRITION 2024 convention.
This acceleration impact of recent health-positive compounds is one other instance of the AI acceleration impact I wrote about yesterday. Issues are starting to maneuver exponentially sooner at each stage of the meals worth chain, which over time means our fundamental understanding of the foundations underpinning what we do (corresponding to meals product improvement) offers method to fully new guidelines which might be rewritten largely by AI.
Our Favourite AI Meals Picture of the Week: Hungry Monkey
We like AI-generated meals artwork and figured we’d present you a few of our favorites on a weekly foundation.
In the event you’d prefer to submit your AI-created meals artwork (or if you happen to’ve discovered one you suppose we must always function, drop the picture and the supply/attribution (ideally a hyperlink) on our Spoon Slack.
