Oreo owner wants to use AI to come up with new snacks

Mondelez, the giant corporation that owns popular snacks like Oreo, Chips Ahoy and Sour Patch Kids, wants to use AI to generate ideas for new snacks.

The Wall Street Journal explains that Mondelez has been working on such an AI tool since 2019. With it, food scientists would specify desired characteristics like flavour (i.e. “buttery” or “vanilla intensity”), aroma (such as “oily” or “burnt”) and appearance (“roundness” and “edges,” among other things). The tool would also factor in the cost of ingredients, environmental impact and nutritional value.

Per the Journal, Mondelez has trained the AI on the “essence” of classic products like Oreos so it won’t stray too far from them. In that sense, it’s easy to imagine this AI tool coming up with different flavours of, say, Oreo or Sour Patch Kids.

But of course, there’s no guarantee that an AI wouldn’t flub an order. The Journal reports that early on in the process, the AI suggested making cookies with a lot of baking soda due to the ingredient’s low-cost, which, of course, doesn’t take into consideration that this wouldn’t necessarily taste good. The company says it’s since used the AI in over 70 projects, including gluten-free Oreos to revising the Chips Ahoy recipe.

It remains to be seen what will continue come out of these AI-conceived food items and how, if at all, Mondelez might promote them. I, for one, wouldn’t want to eat an AI-generated Oreo flavour, but who knows if Mondelez would even be open about that in marketing or packaging.

Source: The Wall Street Journal