An "AI Restaurant" will open in Dubai

The new WOOHOO restaurant in Dubai will offer dishes developed by artificial intelligence. This is reported by Reuters.

WOOHOO positions itself as a place that offers a "dinner of the future." The opening is scheduled for September in the central part of Dubai, near the tallest building in the world - Burj Khalifa.

I am going to a place where chefs will prepare the food, and the culinary language model Aiman will be responsible for the menu, atmosphere, and service. It has been trained on "decades of research in food science, data on molecular composition, and over a thousand recipes from culinary traditions around the world".

Although the neural network cannot smell, taste, or interact with its dishes like a regular chef, it breaks down cuisine into its components — texture, acidity, umami — and combines them into an unusual blend of flavors and ingredients.

Then the obtained prototypes are refined by human chefs who taste the product and provide recommendations. The work will be led by the famous chef from Dubai, Reif Osman.

"Their reactions to my proposals help clarify my understanding of what works beyond pure data," Aiman explained in an interview through an interactive interface.

The creators of the model emphasized that they do not aim to replace the human factor in cooking. They want to complement it.

"Human culinary arts will not disappear, but we believe that Aiman will help elevate ideas and creativity," said project co-founder Oytun Chakir.

Aiman is also involved in creating recipes using ingredients that restaurants typically throw away — such as meat or fat trimmings.

In the long term, the founders of WOOHOO believe that Aiman can be licensed to restaurants worldwide to reduce kitchen waste and enhance the sustainability of the industry.

Let us remind you that in 2024, McDonald's tested an AI solution from IBM for automated order taking. The result did not satisfy the company.