In Singapore, Italian national Stefano Cantù has developed an AI-powered app that can recommend recipes by telling you what ingredients are in your fridge and cupboards. He called it „ChefGPT” in a nod to the app powered by ChatGPT.
„I’m Italian, so of course I cook stuff,” says Mr Canto, who works for a software company. He says he came up with the idea „over a weekend” after asking ChatGPT for recipe inspiration.
The app has drop-down menus and toggles that allow users to specify which tools they have in their kitchen, or if they’re in a hurry or not a very good cook. The AI then comes up with a recipe and a picture of the dish.
Mr Cantu says it gained 30,000 users within a week and a half of its launch last year. But then he received „a big bill from OpenAI,” the company behind ChatGPT.
He now continues to pay OpenAI regular fees for using its AI. Mr Kanto explains that when a start-up like his builds its app on top of another company’s technology, it’s a standard arrangement.
He adds that he’s constantly trying to find „the right balance between advertising and subscriptions and the right level of utility to deliver free users.” And „monetizing free users’ data without selling it”.
Back in Dubai, Spartak Arutyunyan at Dodo Pizza says AI should be seen as something fun rather than something you can base your entire menu on.
Nevertheless, Dodo Pizza is now helping customers in Dubai try using AI to dream up unusual pizza toppings that they order through its app. The company says it aims to expand the AI functionality to other branches around the world.