I created an AI-generated recipe from Facebook – see what it turned out

AI-generated recipes are appearing all over Facebook – and real people are making them. Some people don’t realize they’re cooking from recipes written by robots. After all.

AI-generated recipes are appearing all over Facebook. This is circulated from pages that emit images of food that look creepy every hour.

Unlike the “Ebi Yes” type of AI-generated slop, this food-centric one flies under the radar. Because it looks like an existing genre already on social media.

So, while the image of an old lady standing next to a crochet tank is clearly fake, no one is going to turn a blind eye with a healthy weekday dinner recipe.

I looked into several Facebook pages that post what appears to be AI-generated recipes using images that have been generated. (How do you suspect it? The image had obvious signs of AI, like a fork-like tine eraser, or strangely shaped fingers or distorted edges.)

What I found most surprising is that people are actually cooking recipes generated by these AI. Sometimes they enjoy the results.

So I had to take part in the kitchen action myself. I made one of the salmon dishes – let’s call it “Salmongpt.”

One popular Facebook page sends out recipes every hour

I focused on Lora Chef, a Facebook page with over 150,000 followers. This is one of many similar recipe pages with several Telltale AI features that are growing across the platform. The profile picture on the page features attractive brunette women. We also link to websites that offer sign-up for our email recipe newsletter.

The phone number on Lora Chef’s Facebook page didn’t work when I tried multiple times over several days. I emailed the contact address listed and received the first reply. “Hello, how can I help?” – But the account didn’t respond to subsequent emails with my questions, such as being at the back of the page and making sure I’m using AI. I also sent a direct Facebook message but received no reply. According to the About section of the page, its managers are in Morocco and Türkiye.

Theoretically, images generated by AI should be labelled meta platforms, but that’s a difficult task, so be honest. AI Chicken Palm does not destabilize democracy. Meta pointed out this policy and declined to comment further.

Lora Chef has recently posted new recipes on Facebook about an hour a day. So there are hundreds, maybe thousands of recipes. (I gave up scrolling when I returned until December, but the page was created in July 2024.)

The image looks all similar. Specifically, almost every dish usually has the same beige sauce sucking up the food from spoons, forks, chopsticks or other tools that only AI can dream of. The sauce is oddly similar in all dishes, but in the title the recipe calls it garlic sauce, white sauce, cream sauce, garlic iori dipping sauce, etc. (There are sauces that look the same even in desserts . )

The food looks pretty appealing, and many of them have comments from real people who express something like “delicious!” Or they say they want to try it. Very commonly, people tag friends in comments – they’ll probably suggest it to their spouse for dinner.

A food writer in Omaha, Nebraska said that the AI ​​recipes are latching on something.

“I can see people are interested in recipes. All recipes feature trendy ingredients such as all cottage cheese. Non-commercial flat water-free presses. “Click, Apparently designed for sharing and commenting.”

Still, when she was looking at recipes on many different Facebook pages, she said, “It’s clear that which post is a computer-generated, real human-made recipe, and a human-shot photo. I think so.”

These people actually cooked the recipes

In comments on the vegetables and Tzatziki’s dip on the Lora Chef page, Lizzy Mimzy said the sauce tasted exactly the same as the ranch. When I chatted with her, she said she had cooked several other dishes from the page but hadn’t realized it was AI. “I was wondering why the photo looked like all the similar colors and textures,” she said.

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“What’s generated by AI is what takes away people from the real love they put food in,” Mimmy said.

Jacq Dolittle commented that her boyfriend “made a bowl of grilled chicken and broccoli at Creamy Garlic Sauce.” She said it was a bit bland, but still good. “I’ve heard that AI recipes are always a little farther away,” she wrote.

Other dishes seemed to have some issues.

In the popular Parmesan-covered chicken recipe, several comments stated that in order to achieve the brown crust of the image type, the chicken must be fryed without being cooked. One comment reads as follows: “I didn’t realize this was generated by AI until I made it, and I’m disappointed in myself. The sauce isn’t too bad except it’s watery, and what is the chicken itself He doesn’t laugh either.

I made AI salmon with avocado crema and lime

I had to test one of these recipes myself. I’m not used to trying AI-suggested foods. Google’s AI answer suggested, so I made pizza with glue in the sauce.

From the Lora Chef page, I guessed it a recent salmon recipe – it seemed relatively easy so I chose the white sauce.

I asked for a food processor for cream sauce, but I didn’t have to completely drag it out of the cupboard, but it was fine.

The salmon called out some spices on top, then pan-fried with olive oil. My husband, a chef in the family, said canola oil is usually preferred due to its high smoke points. (This was probably an AI mistake.)

In the end I served it on rice and it was… okay. Both the fish and the sauce are slightly bland. But I lived eating AI food.

It appears that AI can produce acceptable recipes for common dishes. This makes sense – there are many things about dishes that are replicated over and over, and the same steps tend to follow each other in the process. This is perfect for AI.

But generative AI can do some things well, but it doesn’t always work. Writing an actual recipe can be a nuanced and difficult task. Cook each step and use your knowledge to avoid pitfalls. For example, my salmon called sesame seeds on top (skipped), but those seeds probably were burning in the pot (but would have been good for salmon and roasted salmon). Human recipe writers would have known this intuitively.

At the scale of the harmful content generated by AI that can flood Facebook, recipes certainly aren’t like political misinformation or financial fraud.

But unlike other AI-generated ones that may just elicit comments and likes from unsuspecting people, there are actually people who spend the evening cooking and eating these recipes.