Planning the meals for the week is a chore and choosing the gifts over the birthdays and holidays that mark the year takes time. And any parent knows that children’s books become repetitive, without always being adapted to the child’s situation or to their current difficulties.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can lend a hand.
Meals
Some private chefs have embraced AI to craft detailed menus that take into account diners’ dietary preferences and restrictions. (Chefs seem less keen on the idea of asking the AI for recipes: if the robot is wrong, it’s disaster.)
Chatbots like ChatGPT or Bing excel at designing varied meal plans. As always, the more detailed your requests, the better. For example, a private chef shared a very specific request on Reddit, namely a three-day meal plan for a diabetic vegan with a nut allergy. Even the format can be specified: ChatGPT was asked for a meal plan presented in a printable table to stick in the fridge.
ILLUSTRATION BY TESS SMITH-ROBERTS, THE NEW YORK TIMES
You can plan meals, find gifts and create children’s stories with generative AI.
Here is my message:
“There are two of us, my wife and I. Plan us meals for five days: breakfast, snacks, lunch and supper. We love Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Italian cuisines. I like meat ; my wife prefers chicken and seafood. We have no restrictions. We want to lose weight after the pandemic. »
Here is the robot’s response:
“Here’s a five-day meal plan based on your preferences, incorporating Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Italian cuisines, while keeping meals lean and healthy for weight loss.” »
The program included three meals and two snacks for each day.
Generative AI often produces different results from the same prompt. Repeating the question generates slightly different menu suggestions. Making small changes also varies the results.
Once the menu has been drawn up, you have to ask for the recipes: “Can you find recipes for all these meal suggestions? Include the link to each recipe online so I can verify the source. »
ChatGPT has provided a long list of recipes from cooking sites and food blogs. (French sites such as Marmiton and Current Cuisine were proposed for the French solicitation made by The Press. By specifying that you want recipes from Quebec sites, you got suggestions from sites like Ricardo and Coup de Pouce.)
The paid version GPT-4 gives better results; the free GPT-3 version provided some broken links, presumably because its training data is older. Bing, from Microsoft, is also good for this type of query, but Bard, from Google, did not provide links to recipes.
One last tip: ask your robot to compile the list of ingredients for all recipes. He can even group them by grocery department.
As always, to be on the safe side, check recipes to make sure your robot isn’t hallucinating.
Give better gifts
Let’s move on to gift-picking, a talent not everyone has. Several AI tools do this, including a website that offers gift ideas based on the recipient’s Instagram profile.
I preferred DreamGift, where a robot asks you questions about the person’s age, gender, interests and hobbies, as well as your budget; it provides ideas and links for ordering online.
It also works by asking a chatbot. Bing and Bard are connected to search engines and are powerful shopping assistants. Tip: To get tailored recommendations, give plenty of details about your budget and who you’re shopping for.
For bedtime
Let’s end with something more creative. One can use AI to create a personalized bedtime story or even print your own children’s book.
Make ChatGPT or Bard a detailed solicitation indicating your child’s favorite story genre, the details you want to include, and the situation you want the story to address.
Here is the solicitation I made to ChatGPT for a child who would be sad to have moved to a new house. I asked to bring in some familiar characters:
“Act like a children’s book author. My child is going through a difficult time, after a move and a change of school. Write a story to help her adjust to this situation. Incorporates our dogs, Max and Mochi, corgis, as characters. »
The robot generated a story about Max and Mochi, a pair of sibling corgis puppies. They liked to play in the park and were sad to have to move. But they took care of each other, went to their new school, where they made new friends: Bella, the spirited beagle, and Charlie, the mischievous chihuahua.
Everything went well.
If you feel like it, you can generate images to accompany the text. Thus, Midjourney produced an illustration for a children’s book representing two corgis playing together in a park.
To produce a complete book, Midjourney could be asked to generate images to accompany each paragraph of the chatbot’s story. Then, a photo service with a book option, like Google Photos or Shutterfly, can print and ship the personalized children’s book.
This article was originally published in The New York Times.