A pizza chain in Dubai asked ChatGPT to create a topping combination based on the city’s tastebuds and it has turned out to be a huge success.

Dodo Pizza, a restaurant and delivery chain popular in Dubai, used AI to create the “Chicken Shawarma AI-generated pizza” and the city’s residents can’t get enough.

Talking to the BBC, Spartak Arutyunyan, who’s in charge of Dodo Pizza Dubai’s menu development said, “We asked ChatGPT to create a recipe - the best pizza for Dubai. We launched it, it was actually a huge hit, and it’s still on the menu.”

Arutyunyan wanted a pizza that represented Dubai’s multicultural demographic, so the pizza mixes food staples from across the globe to meet the population's tastes. Topped with shawarma chicken, tahini sauce, paneer, onions, tomato sauce, mozzarella, parsley, and Za’atar herbs, there’s inspiration from the Middle East, India, Europe, and more.

Arutyunyan says, “As a chef, I wouldn't mix these ingredients ever on a pizza, but still, the mix of flavors was surprisingly good”.

We used to have Remy, now we have ChatGPT

This isn’t Dodo Pizza's first use of AI on its pizza menu. The chain launched an AI flavor generator earlier this year in its Dubai app with the ability to create up to 30 million possible combinations. The Pizza chain aims to expand the generator to more locations in Europe, Southeast Asia, and Africa throughout 2024.

That said, the AI-generated pizza’s success is a potential one-hit-wonder as other ChatGPT recipes such as strawberries and pasta, or blueberries and breakfast cereal probably tasted as bad as they sound and didn’t make the cut.

Want to try an AI-generated recipe for yourself? Google’s Gemini-powered Food Mood AI experiment is free to use and lets you combine cuisines from multiple countries.

While my Italian ancestors might turn in their graves at the concept of Hoisin sauce spaghetti which Food Mood generated for me, Dodo Pizza’s pizza success would imply AI might just be the sous-chef you’ve been looking for.

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