AI, the (New) Creative Force of Gastronomy

“It’s the first time in history that technology is doing new things: before, it was only humans who created, and now machines are also doing it.” This phrase, spoken by Cecilia Tham, CEO of Futurity Systems, during the opening session of the Dreams #SpainFoodTechNation space at the Madrid Fusión Alimentos de España congress, held last January in Madrid, made everyone turn their attention to the elephant in the room: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the agrifood industry. Even those who want nothing to do with it have to learn to coexist with it.

Indeed, at Madrid Fusión, there was extensive discussion on how AI has transitioned from being just a curiosity, a mere novelty, to a powerful tool for designing the foods of the future.

This potential has led to projects like Generative Food, driven by Ania, one of Spain's leading technological research and development centers. “It’s a project with a dual focus: on one hand, it can help reformulate food products to improve their nutritional profile, optimize costs, or comply with emerging regulations. But its true potential lies in creating entirely new food products that didn’t exist before, combining innovative ingredients and formulations,” explains Dr. César Asensio Marco, from the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at AINIA.

How does it work? “It uses generative artificial intelligence to analyze large volumes of data on nutrition, consumer preferences, regulations, and market trends. Based on this data, AI can suggest ingredient combinations, propose new textures, or even generate visual representations of never-before-seen products,” explains Marco.

This dual potential—optimizing existing food products (which, once improved, will become something new) and creating entirely new ones—has its focus on consumers, as also explained at Dreams #SpainFoodTechNation by Rubén Hidalgo, Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Capsa Food, a leading Spanish dairy company. “AI tools need to create the new products that the market demands. Consumers are the ones waiting for these proposals.”

Designing Cakes

In a world like that of pastry making, where the visual element plays such an important role, AI can be a huge help for experienced pastry chefs like Christian Escribà. “This is a creative atomic bomb, a brutal qualitative leap. It’s about reducing to the minimum a process that used to take 15 days,” he explains.

In his case, working with AI has allowed him to quickly generate models, so that from a concept (sometimes abstract), images can emerge that serve as a starting point. This has enabled him to create chocolate bars inspired by the Northern Lights, a dessert for the Sant Jordi festival -the patron saint of Catalonia, and a local celebration of Catalan culture, where books and roses are given away in memory of the Saint George and the dragon legend- with a bread resembling dragon scales and a chocolate sword, or a cake for FC Barcelona’s 125th anniversary that incorporates LED lights—ideas that would have taken much more time to develop without AI.

All the Possibilities of Avocado

Beyond all the visual possibilities, AI’s transformative potential allows for the creation of new foods. For Enrique García Gavira, founder of Avolution Lab, the world’s first global hub dedicated to avocado, this technology has allowed him to explore “alternatives to traditional sauces like mayonnaise or alioli, based on avocado. But not only that, it also provides information on how these new products would be accepted in countries as diverse as Thailand, Kenya, or Spain.”

Gavira notes that AI has also helped him think of avocado as “not just a fruit that can be eaten alone, but also as an ingredient that interacts with others, leading to products like an oil made according to the same excellence standards as olive oil.” However, he emphasizes that his company (and many others) have only just begun to take advantage of the AI universe. “We have a Ferrari, but no one’s driving it. We need to invest in resources to fully harness AI.”

Refining Wine

The world of wine is also open to the improvements that AI can bring. In this case, it’s not so much about creating a non-existent product (can something like wine be created, but not be wine?) but primarily about making a better product.

For this, there are companies like Nigal, a startup from Galicia that seeks to provide solutions to its clients through the treatment and analysis of data generated by the companies themselves. They have developed, with the help of AI, a smart wine barrel stopper that “monitors the volume and quality of the wine 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,” explains Lara Neira, CEO of Nigal.

“What this achieves is a significant impact, allowing for the reduction of low-value-added tasks in the winery and an increase in high-value ones,” she explains. Among the benefits of the stopper are reduced losses, which means increased production, as well as reduced electricity consumption, making the winery more sustainable.

Improving Menus

The structuring or design of a menu is also part of the functionalities that AI enables. A menu for the day for everyone: the duo of chef Eneko Atxa (three stars for the Azurmendi restaurant, Larrabetzu, Vizcaya, Basque Country) and physicist Eneko Axpe, who designs meals for NASA astronauts and is an AI expert, have worked on creating an AI that allows for the design of a menu based on parameters such as total price, the number of available chefs to prepare a menu, or the number of diners.

Following the structure of a menu with a first course, a second course, and dessert, the AI will generate a complete menu, broken down into the ingredients that must be used, the cost of these ingredients, and the preparations the chefs will need to make in order to recreate these dishes. The preparations can range from the most traditional to the most avant-garde. Another demonstration of the potential of AI to shape the future of gastronomy.