You may not know Mondelez International by name, but you know what they make — Oreos and Chips Ahoy cookies, along with several other snack food favorites.
The number of variations for each style of cookie has skyrocketed in recent years, bringing with it a cavalcade of cookie flavors that would have melted the minds of primitive Oreo eaters from decades ago. I mean, who could have imagined a world where people have the option to eat a lemonade flavor Oreo… or whatever. This raises the question: how do they come up with all of these new flavors?
Thanks to an article in Forbes (or exposé, depending on how you look at it), it turns out that Melendez International has been using AI to come up with these new, experimental cookie flavors.
Since 2019, Melendez International has been incorporating AI into its product development process to speed up recipe creation and optimize flavor combinations. The company says that AI has changed its workflow by cutting down on the number of product tastings required throughout the process.
Odd, considering that the taste of the cookie seems pretty important. However, the company’s AI tool can generate several recipe options based on specific parameters like aroma, appearance, cost, nutritional value, and of course, flavor. In essence, the recipes come out pre-optimized, thus not necessitating a lengthy tasting process.
Oreo Is Using AI to Come Up With New Cookie Flavors
The company has probably invested an enormous amount of money into this AI endeavor. They say that AI has been used to develop over 70 different projects since it was first brought in. Obviously, if one of those projects was a huge creative smash hit, you’d want it mentioned in the article as a way to prove to skeptical readers and shareholders that replacing human creativity and the human trial-and-error process with AI optimization is all worth it in the end, right?
Well, the article does exactly that. And what’s the big cookie innovation that they cite in the Wall Street Journal article justifying the use of AI to its readers? Gluten-free Golden Oreos.
Did we really need AI to tell us that there is a potential market for gluten-free vanilla-flavored Oreos? Probably not. Seems like a human could have thought of that. But, hey, Melendez is the one paying a likely absurd amount of money to coders to develop and maintain its AI systems, so what do I know?
The post They’re Using AI to Come Up With New Oreo Cookie Flavors Now appeared first on VICE.
The post They’re Using AI to Come Up With New Oreo Cookie Flavors Now appeared first on VICE.