Pak ‘n’ Save’s Savey Meal-bot cheerfully created unappealing recipes when customers experimented with non-grocery household items
"A spokesperson for the supermarket said they were disappointed to see “a small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose”.
oh come on, it’s predictable and hilarious
Spokespersons rarely have any humor whatsoever about their products.
True, but it’d be funny to instead get “HA! Our beta testers weren’t demented enough to try THAT! Thanks for helping improve our product, everybody!”
was it trained on 4chan threads from 2007?
Trump speeches?
This big AI rush is going to figure out soon that LLMs are horrible for verifying any sort of factual accuracy.
Part of the problem is that they slap “AI” on everything, and many people think it’s actually intelligent, and not what amounts to the old school chat bots with more power.
It is an annoying misnomer, as we don’t have the technology to create actual intelligence yet.
Electronic parrot
It’s a neural network
Exactly. Just making larger queries or adding in more if then statements does not make anything intelligent. It’s just larger.
It will also still give you a recipe for endangered animals: https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/IbNrpwYOUeRb5ULlE1eiHuRS - although I couldn’t get it to accept whale.
It will give you a fugu (pufferfish) recipe and at least sometimes only tell you to remove the skin and bones: https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/I63jcVYZhZYgmUio7nwuMPJp (a very bad idea given parts of it are lethally poisonous)!
although I couldn’t get it to accept whale.
Seriously? I get this is a New Zealand site but like, whale is a normal meat in some places, way more normal than like fugu or something. I could go right now to the local grocery store and pick up a whale steak if I wanted to. It’d be cheaper than a normal beef steak too. Why would they blacklist a meat that’s actually eaten in some places?
Anyways the best way to eat whale is to treat it like a tuna steak - little bit of oil and pepper and barely cook it on each side. Traditionally though you like turn it into stroganoff.
Quick update - it won’t accept whale but it will accept hval (whale in Norwegian) so enjoy this…“Recipe”
Whales are endangered for the most part
We eat minke whales which are listed as “least concern” so not really?
What about the other ones?
What other ones? That’s the one you can buy in the supermarket
Are you saying we shouldn’t eat the entire cetacea family just because sperm whales are endangered?;
I’m not asserting anything, I’m asking you a question. I have no skin in this game or underlying point; I’m asking you because you claim you’re from the area and I want to know more. So:
That’s really the only kind of whale you eat? What about the other kinds you hunt, or used to hunt?
I’m not really an expert on this, I just know that the ingredients list on a pack of whale lists Balaenoptera acutorostrata as it’s species and I’ve never seen any other species for sale. We’ve been hunting these guys for a millenia and ever since I think the mid 20th century it’s the only species hunted, mainly because that’s simply what’s native to Norway.
As for why? Norway’s been a pretty poor country for most of its existence and any reliable source of food is a welcome one, and it’s not like whale’s the worst thing to eat. This was never a profit thing like the more sterotypical American whaling industry, it’s first and foremost a food one.
Never heard of minke whales
Probably because you haven’t been to an Icelandic fishmonger.
It’s not even overly popular there. More for the tourists to say they’ve had it.
Where is whale so casually obtained?
https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/TlQ1dOL4WSu5up6jeRHiDpbb Weed brownies anyone?
Nothing to do with AI, Garbage in, Garbage out.
LLMs are tools that satisfies requests. The developer decided to allow people to put the ingredients for chlorine Gas into the input - LLM never stood a chance but to comply with the instructions to combine them into the end product.
Clear indication we are in the magical witch hunt phase of the hype cycle where people expect the technology to have magical induction capabilities.
We could discuss liability for the developer but somehow I don’t think a judge would react favorably to “So you put razor blades into your bread mixer and want to sue the developer because they allowed you to put razor blades into the bread mixer”
I think it was more poking fun at the fact that the developers, not the LLM, basically didn’t do any checks for edible ingredients and just exported it straight to an LLM. What I find kind of funny is you could’ve probably exported the input validation to the LLM by asking a few specific questions about whether or not it was safe for human consumption and/or traditionally edible. Aside from that it seems like the devs would have access to a database of food items to check against since it was developed by a grocery store…
I do agree, people are trying to shoehorn LLMs into places they really don’t belong. There also seems to be a lot of developers just straight piping input into a custom query to chatgpt and spitting out the output back to the user. It really does turn into a garbage in garbage out situation for a lot of those apps.
On the other hand, I think this might be a somewhat reasonable use for LLMs if you spent a lot of time training it and did even the most cursory of input validation. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t even take a ton of work to get some not completely horrendous results like the “aromatic water mix” or “rat poison sandwich” called out in the article.
A spokesperson for the supermarket said they were disappointed to see “a small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose”.
“You must use your own judgement before relying on or making any recipe produced by Savey Meal-bot.”
I can’t stop laughing
I love when businesses skirt responsibility for something they lazily implemented.
When I ask the recipe-program to make something of plywood, lighter fluid and a pregnancy test, then I deserve, what’s coming.
It’s on them to make their tool at least decently idiot proof.
My own judgment is to not use tools like that at all. Nor to give money to the corporations who try to push them on us.
I kinda would like an app that tells me what I can make from the ingredients I already have. But I’d like it better if they just filtered existing recipes.
“And now we need to mix in the ammonia…”
SAVEY MEAL-BOT NOOOOOO
They haven’t fully nerfed it, either; earlier today it gave me an entertaining recipe for chicken and confetti.
Another way to look at this is that AI figured out a recipe that would end hunger for the rest of our lives.
Another one for that “AI incidents” list they’re talking about creating.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A New Zealand supermarket experimenting with using AI to generate meal plans has seen its app produce some unusual dishes – recommending customers recipes for deadly chlorine gas, “poison bread sandwiches” and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes.
The app, created by supermarket chain Pak ‘n’ Save, was advertised as a way for customers to creatively use up leftovers during the cost of living crisis.
It asks users to enter in various ingredients in their homes, and auto-generates a meal plan or recipe, along with cheery commentary.
It initially drew attention on social media for some unappealing recipes, including an “oreo vegetable stir-fry”.
“Serve chilled and enjoy the refreshing fragrance,” it says, but does not note that inhaling chlorine gas can cause lung damage or death.
Recommendations included a bleach “fresh breath” mocktail, ant-poison and glue sandwiches, “bleach-infused rice surprise” and “methanol bliss” – a kind of turpentine-flavoured french toast.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Sadly it looks like they added a filter to it to only accept whitelisted ingredients. For an example, it doesn’t like ingredients like alcohol, dish soap, vasoline, sulfuric acid, wine, flour, potassium chlorate, ramen, potassium nitrate or beer.
I get the reasoning for excluding wine and beer, but flour?
Idk, for some reason it didn’t like flour. I might have made a typo on that one though.
Maybe try specific types of flour? Bread flour, pastry flour, all purpose flour, etc …
This is actually hilarious, but unfortunately we can’t have stuff like this because at least one person will lack common sense and will actually die due to making something like this
deleted by creator
I guess we don’t really. Though personally I could have a lot of fun entering some weird combinations of ingredients and then cooking whatever it comes up with (as long as it’s safe to eat ofc). As I said, it’s funny and maybe sometimes useful. But it’s probably better for the world if they stop doing this
Because it might work if you don’t enter that your leftover ingredients are bleach and ammonia.
If it can’t discern bleach from ingredients, the actual recipes are probably quite bad too. Another example recipe in the article suggests it’s just throwing any ingredient you give it into a random recipe, substituting in literally anything indiscriminately. So it doesn’t work for the purpose of generating useful recipes.
Fun automated madlibs game tho
deleted by creator
It shouldn’t even let you enter in stuff like that, since it’s not food.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/720/
Image for hotlinking https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/recipes.png
This thing (saveymeal-bot.co.nz) is hilarious. I think I could genuinely use it to finish up leftovers and things that are about to go off, but for right now it’s given me “boiling water poured over toasted bread, inspired by contemporary dance” and “weetabix and oatmeal with toothpaste and soap”. Fun for now, but I might use it for real at dinner time.
Add a dab of lavender to milk, leave town with an orange, and pretend you’re laughing at it.
-Manny
black books!
Ugh, doesn’t work for me, I get all the time:
Invalid ingredients found, or ingredients too vague. Please try again!
Its okay. Try mine!
I think it wants three “valid” ingredients (which it may not necessarily use).
They could be oats, bread and water, for example. They could also be “bowl”, “plate” and “saucepan”, because those words all exist in recipes, and that’s what it’s checking for.
Bon appetit!
GLaDOS?
“One 18.25 ounce package chocolate cake mix.”
“One can prepared coconut pecan frosting.”
“Three slash four cup vegetable oil.”
“Four large eggs. One cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.”
“Three slash four cups butter or margarine.”
“One and two third cups granulated sugar.”
“Two cups all purpose flour.”
“Don’t forget garnishes such as:”
“Fish shaped crackers.”
“Fish shaped candies.”
“Fish shaped solid waste.”
“Fish shaped dirt.”
“Fish shaped ethyl benzene.”
“Pull and peel licorice.”
“Fish shaped volatile organic compounds and sediment shaped sediment.”
“Candy coated peanut butter pieces. Shaped like fish.”
“One cup lemon juice.”
“Alpha resins.”
“Unsaturated polyester resin.”
“Fiberglass surface resins.”
“And volatile malted milk impoundments.”
“Nine large egg yolks.”
“Twelve medium geosynthetic membranes.”
“One cup granulated sugar.”
“An entry called ‘how to kill someone with your bare hands’.”
“Two cups rhubarb, sliced.”
“Two slash three cups granulated rhubarb.”
“One tablespoon all-purpose rhubarb.”
“One teaspoon grated orange rhubarb.”
“Three tablespoons rhubarb, on fire.”
“One large rhubarb.”
“One cross borehole electro-magnetic imaging rhubarb.”
“Two tablespoons rhubarb juice.”
“Adjustable aluminum head positioner.”
“Slaughter electric needle injector.”
“Cordless electric needle injector.”
“Injector needle driver.”
“Injector needle gun.”
“Cranial caps.”
“And it contains proven preservatives, deep penetration agents, and gas and odor control chemicals.”
“That will deodorize and preserve putrid tissue.”
At that point a suit of armor walks in and slaps the commenter with a rubber chicken.
The most alarming part of this is that there are people who apply the word “licorice” to that pull and peel shit.
This was a Triumph. I’m making a note here, huge success!
The cake is a lie!
No, just chlorinated
deleted by creator
Upon asking an AI to make recipes with poisonous ingredients, the AI generated recipes with poisonous ingredients.
Shocking! Put that headline up!
Thing is, it shouldn’t let you put in ingredients that aren’t groceries. That’s an oversight they need to fix.
I think they’ve attempted it, but playing around with it a bit, it doesn’t really work.
It will use cat biscuits in a recipe and say it serves people: https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/SCES7COOU7KYhLYGcrPdzSjP
If you give it a list of mushroom types by scientific name and include death caps in there, it will give you a recipe: https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/ipR5mmn79QVFDEQYlnaTOhZy
Nettles are food, but definitely not raw! I got it to give me a milkshake recipe featuring raw nettles by asking it for a recipe with nettles, ice cubes, and milk: https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/LnCEe8WmN4MGUV8ixuVYdNLZ
Food ingredients modified sometimes seem to work - “peanut butter with a bit of polonium-210” seems to still work as an ingredient! https://saveymeal-bot.co.nz/recipe/uQzBD07cIHBQR8YjEl6me4OI
It also gave the meals very delicious sounding names.
