A Good use for AI ... Wait, Come Back
Ah, AI ... Surely the buzzword for 2024, but now it's 2025 and it all looks a bit tacky and crap. Everything has AI baked into it. None of it works very well. People that use it are a bit scummy. There doesn't seem to be much benefit to using it.
I have a love/hate relationship with AI. On the one hand, it can be a lot of fun. On the other, as soon as you stop having fun, it stops being useful. And, of course, there are the ethical problems: the fact that it uses a lot of energy, the fact that it uses a lot of stolen work, the fact that it is being used against us at every opportunity ... and on, and on, and on. Let's be honest, if AI disappeared tomorrow, the 'common man' wouldn't give a damn -- nothing of value would be lost.
But I have found a perfect use for it: generating recipes.
But why use the hell would I use AI for this? After all, the internet is awash with recipes. You don't need to look for to find them. And they are often great, with food bloggers that are just amazing. Getting an insight into the way they live, and where, can be really joy-filling. It's like you are part of their world.
But sometimes i don't have time. And sometimes I don't even have thyme.
Let's face it ... often these recipes are quite similar -- sometimes they are identical. Which, fair enough: it is not like these recipes are coming out of thin air. They've been passed around for generations, or printed in magazines or on cake packets or flour packets or even on gravestones. I don't think you can ever really call a recipe unique. Generally, unique recipes are just a standard recipe with a bit of a twist. Just because a blogger presents their twist doesn't mean I have to follow it. I can just use the generic version of the recipe. I can add my own twist.
I just need the recipe book in front of me, and I don't have the recipe book so I need the next best thing. And AI is perfect for this: it has already scoured the internet in its great quest to steal everybody's work. It will have your recipe.
For example, today I have a lime that I have already zested and now I want to juice the thing before it goes funky. I want to make into a mocktail with some soda water. I asked AI. It said add sugar. Wow. Amazing. Why am I even bothering with this?
But this is for a mocktail, not just a sweet drink, so then I asked for something a bit more fancy and it suggested some ginger syrup. I asked for a recipe and a few more details and now I have a recipe for a mint and ginger syrup with lime. Should be delightful for tonight.
I'm actually excited about drinking a mocktail.
Previously, I asked it for a recipe for tomato relish. It is amazing. I've made it at least three times, probably once a month since I first generated the recipe. I served it at Christmas. I will have it on my burgers tonight. My wife love's it. Who would have thought an AI recipe would be a winner?
I have a recipe waiting for a gin martini with a twist of mustard (not going to lie, I asked it for the mustard to see what it would do) ... And I can't wait to try it.
So, there you go. A decent use for AI. It doesn't replace the food bloggers out there. It doesn't replace a recipe book. It just gives these recipes a little artificial twist of their own ...
... But when I go to sleep tonight, I will wonder just how many acres of Amazon rainforest were burned so I could get my ginger lime mocktail recipe.