Sony goes gourmet with an AI cooking app, chef assistant robot

Christmas is approaching, which means feasts and celebrations! It’s hard, though, with so many holidays and dine-worthy occasions to think-up recipes and what to cook in general. Fret not, as Sony AI comes to the rescue. The brainchild of the Japanese company promotes fundamental research and development of artificial intelligence (AI) and aims to “create AI that unleashes human imagination and creativity.”

The first task before the recently founded division (April 2020) is the Gastronomy Flagship Project. It consists of a Recipe Creation App, a Chef Assisting Cooking Robot, and a Community Co-creation Initiative. Sony AI picked up cooking as it’s very demanding on artificial intelligence algorithms. Creating a cooking recipe means mixing ingredients and when we take into account proportions too, the possibilities are infinite.

Sony AI will utilize a variety of data sources – including recipes and ingredient data, such as taste, aroma, flavor, molecular structure, nutrients, etc. – to develop a Recipe Creation App that will be powered by proprietary AI algorithms to assist the world’s top-level chefs in their creative process of ingredient pairing, recipe design, and menu creation.

The second part of the project is aimed at designing and developing a cooking robot. There are no specific details at this stage but the machine is supposed to help chefs through the entire cooking process, from preparation to the plating. The co-creative cooking initiative is the last part of this culinary venture - it aims to build a worldwide chef community network that includes universities, research institutes, and private companies.

Even though the new initiative is geared towards the chef professionals, the Recipe Creation App could very easily find its way into Sony’s flagship smartphones. It would be nice to have an app that can splice up a recipe in seconds and help everyone with cooking recipe paralysis during the “difficult” winter feasting period.