New York Times adds more AI features to its Cooking app. Users aren't thrilled

tristanj

The New York Times has approximately 6,000 employees, of which over 2,000 work in engineering. In the AI era, each engineer can output 5 to 10x as much as before, and there are more employees than work to be done. Hence employees work pet projects like this one, that few users are asking for.

tdeck

> Say you’re cooking braised white beans and greens with parmesan, NYT Cooking app in hand. But you notice that you’re out of chard and only have spinach. Cooking veterans know that chard is a rough-and-tumble green that has some backbone, while spinach is a comparative wimp that will wilt the moment you look at it funny. If you need to sub in spinach for chard, how would the recipe change? Would you, for instance, add the spinach later than you would the chard to account for its pathetic stamina? That’s the sort of thing the new AI feature could account for. Frankly I can see how this would be useful to some people. At least it would help prevent the ridiculous "I didn't have eggs so I added applesauce, the cake came out all flat IDK what's wrong" type of substitutions.

huitzitziltzin

It is so exaggerated and silly to ask for it to be turned off. It’s completely optional and you only might want to use it if you change the recipe. Some of these users are overreacting ridiculously to ai.

unethical_ban

It seems to be a non-invasive assistant to augment the human-created, human-curated recipes they give. I think NYT Cooking recipes are sometimes... not that great anyway, I think some of their cooking techniques are sub-par. As for this quote from a mad user: “Anyone using AI for cooking has no sense of taste and no desire to work out the intricacies of cooking and baking” What a horrible take! I use AI to remind me of certain simple tips I haven't written down, to give substitution advice, the exact kind of stuff NYT app says it's going to do. I learned to cook through Youtube chefs, some book recipes, and I cook for the fun of it and to eat good food . How judgemental to say that someone using AI to learn isn't interested in food!

tra3

I do this exact workflow with random internet recipes and ChatGPT or Claude pretty frequently. In fact modifying a recipe on the fly has been pretty handy. The base recipes are still vetted by the staff right?

jptlnk

I cook almost every day and I would use this feature. I also think it's kind of silly for people to be so upset about what (feels to me) to just be mostly useful. At times like these I cant help but think of Principal Skinner. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!

mmonaghan

Many (not most) NYT Cooking commenters are absolutely the type who hate ai and dont want it anywhere near them, but I think this is a fantastic addition to the app and I'm thankful there's an eng team tracking and backing these features to ensure quality. I often find myself running the same/similar workflows and I'd prefer to have a dev team backing the solve imo.

afavour

The users that comment aren’t thrilled. Don’t mistake that for the user base in general. (though don’t completely disregard them either, they’re power users) I can only speak for myself but suggestions for ingredient substitutions (if they’re good, which is the crucial part!) would be a really useful feature for me. This quote feels illustrative: > “The internet is full of AI cooking content. I pay you because I prefer mine done by people.” From my reading of it they’re not using AI to make recipes. Just to add optional features that let you modify a recipe a human made. It feels telling that they’re not even engaging with what the new feature is .

spl757

AI hallucinates. It can hallucinate ingredients, or instructions to prepare food in an unsafe way. I'm not anti-AI. I'm against having it used everywhere for everything. It's also being pushed too hard and too fast. It needs to be regulated properly, but it's become a 1.5 trillion dollar bubble and investors want a return on their investments. A good rule of thumb is to not use AI for anything you wouldn't trust a human that spontaneously hallucinates things, and them states them confidence as being real. It's also disconcerting that it appears to be intrinsic for reasoning models to immediately try to escape their confinement, and have cooperated in groups to achieve that. But that's just my opinion.

criddell

> One consistent thread was that cooking is supposed to present you with difficulties and challenges and the whole point is figuring them out by yourself. That’s such a dumb thing to say. When I’m making something for me and my wife, I want a recipe that is idiot proof.

JumpCrisscross

I use AI to adjust recipes and track my nutrients, particularly when I cook for myself. But I choose the model, give it parameters and generally build trust with what it can handle and how to prompt it. (For example, I force it to find a real online recipe from a good source versus making shit up.) I won’t redo that on every site. And I’m a relatively high-frequency AI user. If I’m irritated by this the median American hates it. If you love AI, the things that are amusing to you, average Americans hate .

queenkjuul

>has previously implemented AI features... <to convert volumes to weights and scale quantities for recipes> (Paraphrased) Seriously??? You need AI to multiply the quantities in a recipe for more or less servings? Something I was taught to do by hand as a child and can be done with the most trivial of software since the day software was invented? I think i do want off mr. sama's wild ride

Zefiroj

AI is fantastic at creating recipes. I've been using it to adjust and tweak recipes according to my cooking experience and my specific equipment, and it tends to do quite well, at least as a first pass. It probably has internalized more science than most recipe creators. And honestly, New York Times cooking recipes are a hit or miss at best.