What Can ChatGPT Do For A Cook + Writer?

Experimenting with ChatGPT, Regula Ysewijn, Saag Gnoochi Tadka, and Lychee Lime Popsicles

Dark Rye and Honey Cake with Regula Ysewijn

This Thursday, May 25th, at 7 pm, I’ll talk with celebrated Belgian cookbook author, food historian, photographer, and a judge of the Belgian Bake Off Vlandereen, Regula Ysewijn, about her latest book, Dark Rye and Honey Cake, at Now Serving L.A. (Event details here). The book is more than a cookbook; it is also an insightful and intelligent book that takes a deep dive into the history of the low countries, the role that colonization, language, and the sugar refineries played in the development of recipes that are now iconic of Belgium’s (Amazon/Bookshop/Now Serving) history and food landscape, from the evolution of waffles and waffle iron designs to the foods eaten at festivals like Carnival and Lent, this book will take you on a fascinating journey through the Low Countries. Come say hi and bring your questions.

I tried ChatGPT & What I Learned

There’s been a lot of talk about ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot created by Open AI everywhere, even in food media. People have been cooking and trying out recipes created by ChatGPT and reporting their results. At some of the publication houses I write for, the use of this new technology to create and submit recipes and essays is strictly forbidden. (I’ve previously spoken about this predictive algorithm with the New York Times Food Section).

GPT is an acronym for Generative Pre-trained Transformers, which are a type of neural network architecture capable of generating data in a consistent manner by predicting the probability of a text string (token) being repeated within a sentence. This means that the algorithm is not limited to text and can be used to generate images (e.g. Stable Diffusion), music, and more recently video.

— ChatGPT Online

The premise is very simple, you ask the bot a question, and it answers. It’s like a genie in a bottle but doesn’t grant wishes. It attempts to send you in the direction it thinks is correct. It reminded me of Google but with the illusion of an all-knowing librarian or a call center. Because there were no suggested photos, videos, or top ten links to see, just text, the interface sometimes felt a little drab and stark.

I thought I’d ask ChatGPT a few basic questions; here’s how that went.

It couldn’t build me a ceramic baking dish, but it gave me a brief idea of how the process works and told me to find a professional, which is probably a good thing in my case, as the last time I tried working with pottery and ceramics was in high school.