Is AI Your New Sous Chef? BuzzFeed Now Offers AI-Powered Recipe Chat

Need suggestions on how to cook pasta perfectly al dente or need a clutch recipe for date night? Botatouille may be able to help.

Found within BuzzFeed’s Tasty app, available now for iOS users, Botatouille is a chatbot that users can interact with in real-time, answering questions about recipes, cooking times, and kitchen tips. There is no additional monthly fee to use Botatouille — for now.

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Although BuzzFeed’s tides are changing, Tasty remains one of BuzzFeed’s bright spots, with over 1 billion cross-platform views each month. It was the Tasty brand that pioneered the concept of cooking tutorial videos designed to go viral, which are now a standalone genre of video that can be found on platforms such as TikTok.

BuzzFeed said the bot combines in-house machine learning systems with OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology. But what’s the difference between ChatGPT and Botatouille? Botatouille is trained to dispatch recommendations from BuzzFeed’s own food editorial staff and its library of recipes. Because Tasty is geared towards younger groups, such as millennials and Gen Z, its answers are usually more interesting than ChatGPT’s.

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For instance, when I asked ChatGPT to generate good one-pot recipes for me, it gave me very standard suggestions, including a one-pot pasta with spinach and tomatoes, one-pot chicken and rice, and a one-pot chili.

Botatouille, on the other hand, suggested a one-pot chicken fajita pasta, a one-pot chicken and mushroom pasta and a one-pot basil pasta. Botatouille offered more variety in the ingredients being used, as well as short videos on how to make the recipes.

BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti hasn’t been shy about outlining his company’s ambitions in the space of generative AI.

Earlier this year, Peretti committed to using OpenAI’s GPT tools to “enhance” and “personalize” its content. The company has already used GPT to not only personalize its popular quizzes, but also to generate SEO-driven travel guides.

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Its latest move, however, outlines the company is looking for new ways to engage advertisers beyond sponsored content and programmatic advertising. BuzzFeed said Botatouille is “providing partners and clients with premium offerings, custom integrations, and additional opportunities across the app and web.”

However, in a recent piece for The New York Times, Peretti said BuzzFeed plans to use AI to “sell subscriptions to its users by providing them personalized services and custom interactions on offerings like Botatouille.”

“We developed Botatouille with our audience in mind; bringing together Tasty’s culinary insights and innovative AI technology to help our community navigate every part of the cooking process,” said Hannah Bricker, BuzzFeed’s general manager of lifestyle content and Tasty.

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“We’re excited to collaborate with our users to continue adapting and improving this AI-powered chefbot based on their feedback — leveraging new technologies to enhance the cooking experience online and in the kitchen.”