Ajinomoto jumps on AI bandwagon with consumer recipe app
Online customers can look up recipes on a dedicated we site based on a variety of themes, including health consciousness, nutritional balance and the time it would take to cook.
Based on their choice of a dish, the AI will then suggest two accompanying recipes from its database of some 10,000 cooking directions. The site also shows the consumer how to cook the dishes it suggests.
The service was developed after a survey by Ajinomoto found that around 76% of respondents said they felt it was a burden to find the right combination of dishes for their meals.
Bionic beer
The Japanese seasoning and food maker is not the first to adopt AI in the food and beverage industry. Indeed, others have adopted the technology in their manufacturing processes.
Last year, Kirin announced that it would employ artificial intelligence to perform beer-making functions that have usually been the responsibility of humans, in a scheme to shorten product development and speed training.
The brewer teamed up with the Mitsubishi Research Institute install AI apps that will determine the desired flavour, aroma, colour and alcohol content, then produce the corresponding recipe.
The machine-learning program will assess optimum brewing formulas based on 20 years' worth of test data. It takes a professional brewer a decade or more to hone such skills.
The use of AI in beer production will also streamline the transfer of expertise to new hires. "AI could discover more efficient methods," Kirin said at the time.
Back to Ajinomoto, it appears that the Tokyo-based food producer is also planning to leverage AI to completely automate the process of fermenting amino acids.
It will quantify the conditions that lend to productive fermentation by 2019, it said. Ajinomoto will create a data-sharing system that will boost cost competitiveness internationally.
