Botatouille: an AI kitchen companion

Digital media company Buzzfeed has launched Botatouille, an AI-powered culinary companion designed by Tasty for cooking, meal prep and shopping experience. In the Tasty app, users can have a real-time conversation with Botatouille, a chatbot, by asking cooking questions like: what recipes can I make with the ingredients in my fridge? how long do you cook salmon? how do you clean cast iron?

Botatouille, Tasty’s AI sous chef, marks the first AI utility product developed by Tasty and showcases the power of artificial intelligence for good. From searching for food and recipe ideas, to planning weekly meals and discovering recipes based on the ingredients in your fridge, Botatouille can assist. The Tasty chef bot will launch in the Tasty app for the brand’s most loyal users, allowing them to have a personalised culinary assistant on their phone — whether in the kitchen, at the store, or on the go.

“We developed Botatouille with our audience in mind; bringing together Tasty’s culinary insights and innovative AI technology to help our community navigate every part of the cooking process,” said Tasty General Manager, Hannah Bricker. “We’re excited to collaborate with our users to continue adapting and improving this AI-powered chefbot based on their feedback — leveraging new technologies to enhance the cooking experience online and in the kitchen.

Tasty, renowned for creating the internet’s most-watched food content, garners over 1-billion cross-platform views each month, making it the largest and most engaged food community on the internet. The launch of Tasty’s first product featuring AI promises to be a more engaging, helpful and exciting experience for users — while offering partners and clients premium offerings, custom integrations and more opportunities across the app and web.

Tasty’s editorial and tech teams, alongside BuzzFeed’s machine learning team, developed the chefbot through a combination of Tasty’s in-house machine learning systems and OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, combined with the extensive network of Tasty’s editorial insights and vast content library. The integration of AI and proprietary data enables Tasty to deliver a new product, leveraging the capabilities of large language models (LLMs) to give loyal Tasty users content that resonates.

Botatouille is currently exclusive to the iOS version of the tasty app and will be available to Android devices next.