It is a common modern refrain that AI should be used by creative people to do boring things, but it is mostly being used by boring people to do creative things.
Even the most talentless content creators can produce a high-quality image or video by typing a few prompts into Midjourney. And if they don’t fancy the effort of writing good copy, ChatGTP has their back. The result is a plethora of soulless content produced by the worst people imaginable, and a stupider, less interesting world.
Sadly, this scenario is in danger of playing out in food innovation. I am bombarded with pitches telling me that AI will soon be generating previously unconsidered flavour combinations based on data-driven understandings of taste. I am als frequently told AI will shortly be able to predict how consumers react to new products, removing the need for taste panels, expert opinions and expensive sensory research.
AI is increasingly being positioned as a tool to remove human creativity from the innovation process. A stupider, less interesting food landscape beckons.
There is plenty of interest and investment, but thankfully it is hard to point to any real-world impact. Most large food companies now have AI tools that can analyse the chemical and physical composition of foods, but every product is also assessed by trained human professionals. And when it comes to product decisions, it is still the human opinion that takes preference.
Perhaps we do not have enough data or processing power yet. As analysis becomes more sophisticated, maybe AI will start to create ground-breaking, market-ready innovations at the push of a button, removing the need for development chefs and innovators completely.
The other possibility is that the challenges of food innovation will prove beyond this generation of AI systems. This is an unfashionable position, but from everything I have seen so far, I think it has merit.
There appears to be a level of subjectivity and cultural influence when it comes to liking food that defies even the most sophisticated numerical analysis. Most of us probably hope that within art and creativity, there is an essence of humanity that goes beyond mere data; perhaps this is also true with great food innovation.
There is no doubting AI will be hugely significant in the future of food. In areas such as supply chain, manufacturing, quality control and waste reduction, it is already more than proving its worth.
It can also have a role in innovation – for instance, in helping to manage complex data sets, or predicting the impact of recipe changes. When AI is used to assist creative people, it can be game-changing. But the focus is so often on replacing the human part of the process that its true potential is under-explored.
If the government’s recently announced AI action plan is to impact on growth, it is going to need to support better innovation. But if the food industry is blindsided by a false belief that computers can be used to replace culinary experience, skill and creativity, then our output will become as stale and boring as the current state of social media content.
Sometimes, the thing holding back good decision-making is not an inability to analyse data fast enough. Most great innovation is maverick and would probably be considered unwise if fully scrutinised. There is still a huge and important role for AI in food innovation, but for it to thrive, it needs to be positioned as a tool that supports a company’s most creative people, not as a low-cost system to replace them.
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