Hacker News

New York Times adds more AI features to its Cooking app. Users aren't thrilled(niemanlab.org)

57 points by ilamont 1 day ago | 108 comments

AI hallucinates. It can hallucinate ingredients, or instructions to prepare food in an unsafe way. I'm not anti-AI. I'm against having it used everywhere for everything.

It's also being pushed too hard and too fast. It needs to be regulated properly, but it's become a 1.5 trillion dollar bubble and investors want a return on their investments.

A good rule of thumb is to not use AI for anything you wouldn't trust a human that spontaneously hallucinates things, and them states them confidence as being real.

It's also disconcerting that it appears to be intrinsic for reasoning models to immediately try to escape their confinement, and have cooperated in groups to achieve that.

But that's just my opinion.

[–] basch 1 day ago

Maybe generative AI. Chef Watson was chemical and flavor pattern matching used to discover unexplored combinations.

If you were building Cooking AI from the ground up, the chemistry and physics would be more like formal logic than plausible word vomit.

[–] zombot 23 hours ago

> used to discover unexplored combinations

Couldn't actual combinatoric software do this much more targeted, cheaper, faster, and more controlled? What does using a slot machine add here, except heating the planet even more?

[–] basch 12 hours ago

Chef Watson was 2012-2018, and a really fun product while it lasted. There’s multiple books published from its output and insights available on Amazon.

[–] fzzzy 21 hours ago

Isn't that what they describe Chef Watson as being?

[–] dominotw 1 day ago

why do ai bro ridicule anyone who uses the word hallucinate.

i remember it being a valid pitfall with this tech . why is it uncool now to use that word?

[–] spl757 1 day ago

It's uncool because it's an inconvenient truth, and there are people that don't want other people to know certain facts.

[–] lokar 1 day ago

Confabulation is a better term

[–] unrented7977 1 day ago

No it isn't

[–] Dylan16807 1 day ago

By what measure? It's an existing term for exactly what happens.

[–] zombot 23 hours ago

Yes, it is.

[–] zombot 23 hours ago

People love using worse or outright wrong terms for stuff. Especially if everybody has gotten used to the wrong term already.

[–] chomp 1 day ago

2 things. 1, hallucination is a sensory perception of something. LLMs don't have senses. The term doesn't make sense when confabulation is literally lying right there. 2, ai bros really like their ai, and run interference when people find flaws in it. This includes derailing conversations with nit picking terminology. Yes i'm aware of the irony in my post.

[–] spl757 1 day ago

confabulation sounds sillyl. In my opinion the word hallucination, when used as a colloqialism in this context, is easier to understand, and makes the point instantly. People see words like confabulation and just give up because words are hard for some people. lol

[–] azan_ 1 day ago

Because it’s no longer a problem if you use frontier models.

[–] dominotw 18 hours ago

Is this ragebait?

[–] zombot 23 hours ago

I invoke Poe's law on this.

[–] azan_ 20 hours ago

Is it you, Ed Zitron?

[–] zombot 19 hours ago

So you were being serious. Fascinating.

[–] queenkjuul 1 day ago

That is absolutely not true

[–] behringer 18 hours ago

The last thing we need is more regulation.

[–] afavour 1 day ago

The users that comment aren’t thrilled. Don’t mistake that for the user base in general. (though don’t completely disregard them either, they’re power users)

I can only speak for myself but suggestions for ingredient substitutions (if they’re good, which is the crucial part!) would be a really useful feature for me.

This quote feels illustrative:

> “The internet is full of AI cooking content. I pay you because I prefer mine done by people.”

From my reading of it they’re not using AI to make recipes. Just to add optional features that let you modify a recipe a human made. It feels telling that they’re not even engaging with what the new feature is.

[–] JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

> ingredient substitutions (if they’re good, which is the crucial part!) would be a really useful feature for me

I have the same reaction to this feature as I do to getting any AI-derived writing: I can do that. I can ask my own AI for substitutions. It can do them with more information about my tastes, context and health needs than the Times could ever have.

[–] a57721 1 day ago

> suggestions for ingredient substitutions (if they’re good, which is the crucial part!) would be a really useful feature for me

Can't they implement this feature without any gen AI? OK, the answer is that they don't want to pay someone for making a list of substitutions, but at least they can generate it and make a human cook revise the results. There is no need for calling gen AI APIs when the app is running.

People are shoving gen AI everywhere out of the hype, including tasks that have better, more reliable solutions with traditional approaches.

[–] forgetfreeman 1 day ago

Why should they engage with something they didnt ask for and clearly don't want? The burden of proof is on new technology, not its skeptics.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

Category mistake -- it's not a fact claim so there's no burden of proof.

[–] queenkjuul 1 day ago

If it claims to be useful, it needs to prove it

[–] msla 1 day ago

I think we can look at how much money Anthropic is making to see the proof here.

[–] neya 1 day ago

Holy red herring. That revenue number isn't from people checking out recipes..or making them

[–] unrented7977 1 day ago

Just like Tesla is a good car company

[–] JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

I use AI to adjust recipes and track my nutrients, particularly when I cook for myself. But I choose the model, give it parameters and generally build trust with what it can handle and how to prompt it. (For example, I force it to find a real online recipe from a good source versus making shit up.)

I won’t redo that on every site. And I’m a relatively high-frequency AI user. If I’m irritated by this the median American hates it. If you love AI, the things that are amusing to you, average Americans hate.

[–] anukin 1 day ago

Are you using an app or similar for this?

[–] JumpCrisscross 1 day ago

Started as Claude. Now a mix of Claude and GLM running locally.

[–] jptlnk 1 day ago

I cook almost every day and I would use this feature. I also think it's kind of silly for people to be so upset about what (feels to me) to just be mostly useful.

At times like these I cant help but think of Principal Skinner. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!

[–] zrobotics 1 day ago

Do you pay for NYT Cooking? B/c I did, and part of the reason was that the recipes were actually tested and I had confidence in them.

I don't want an AI to give it's best guess at what a recipe should be, if that was the case I'd just do a Google search and find one of the heavily polluted blogspam recipes for my query. The point of paying for NYTCooking was that the recipes were tested and normally trustworthy. It introduced me to new cuisines and recipes I hadn't tried before, and part of my willingness to experiment with a new dish was that I could trust the recipe. That's why I was paying for it,it was similar to the cookbook subscription my mom had years ago.

[–] jdlshore 1 day ago

That still seems to be the case, though. The AI is for user-driven modifications to the recipe, like substitutions.

I’m not sure I would trust AI modifications myself, or how I feel about the feature, but it sounds like the base recipes are still human-tested.

[–] mmonaghan 1 day ago

I think you should read the article. You get the exact tested recipe and they only use AI when you instruct it to deviate.

[–] zrobotics 1 day ago

For now.

The reason people are pushing back on this is that it looks like a start to them cutting their expensive test kitchen. Which is why I'm paying them.

[–] cavemandaveman 1 day ago

Why would they do that? There would be nothing differentiating them and nobody would pay for the subscription.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

The reason people are pushing back is that they aren't very bright.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

> I don't want an AI to give it's best guess at what a recipe should be

Then don't use this feature.

[–] not_a_bot_4sho 1 day ago

I like the reference. A lot of people in tech don't realize they're actually Skinner when it comes to AI and what users want.

I spend around $10k in tokens each month, I live and breath it. But conversations with family and friends in other industry grounds me to the fact that not everyone is the same.

Listen to your users.

[–] boringg 1 day ago

I have to ask -- is that $10k work related spend but under your own personal budget or personal life management related? Im always curious what other peoples spend is on. Hope thats not to personal a question.

[–] not_a_bot_4sho 1 day ago

Almost entirely work, like >98%.

I might spend more AI on personal things but that would require a personal life first lol

[–] boringg 13 hours ago

Fair enough! Thanks for clarifying -- I have a tough time imagining a lot of people getting into that spend without work driving it (And paying for it)!

[–] queenkjuul 1 day ago

You're spending as much as i make lol i hope you're at least doubling your money, that's wild

[–] i_love_retros 1 day ago

$10k a month! Are you mental?

What return have you got from that?

Also it's breathe not breath.

[–] 1shooner 1 day ago

>Am I so out of touch

I don't think the HN audience generally appreciates how many people have fundamental problems with AI in it's current form. Today's ingredient replacement hint is tomorrow's comprehensively enshitified content product.

Also, there's a cultural dimension to cooking; it's not just getting a tasty dish out of it, there's provenance and process, the story and the cache. To some people automating that process defeats the purpose, and I bet a lot of those people would be the audience of a subscription recipe service.

[–] coffeefirst 1 day ago

Correct. The public is over sparkle buttons and bad search results.

The future of AI integrations need to be subtle, useful, and not overpromise but add a big “AI makes mistakes not our fault” label on it.

In cooking, maybe that looks like a discovery tool. It should also be possible to tag the recipe library to link back to videos of techniques. There’s plenty of cool stuff that makes sense without needing to scream “we made it AI!”

[–] reaperducer 1 day ago

I would be different is this was yet another free, race-to-the-bottom, corner-cutting web site.

But this is New York Times Cooking. It's a subscription product that people pay hundreds of dollars for.

If they want yet-another-AI-cooking web site, there are thousands launching each day. They pay the Times because they want something better.

It's like finding out that the high-end meal you paid for at a sit-down restaurant was just DoorDashed in from a ghost kitchen down the block.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

> I would be different is this was yet another free, race-to-the-bottom, corner-cutting web site.

> But this is New York Times Cooking. It's a subscription product that people pay hundreds of dollars for.

Which is why this opt-in feature isn't a problem.

> If they want yet-another-AI-cooking web site, there are thousands launching each day. They pay the Times because they want something better.

Which they get ... that hasn't changed at all.

> It's like finding out that the high-end meal you paid for at a sit-down restaurant was just DoorDashed in from a ghost kitchen down the block.

It's nothing like that.

[–] jibalt 9 hours ago

P.S. Slippery slope is a fallacy.

[–] cr1895 23 hours ago

Add “yet” to the end of every counterpoint you’ve made and you can see why some people might find this objectionable

[–] archagon 1 day ago

> At times like these I cant help but think of Principal Skinner. Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!

Funny you think AI critics are the ones doing this. Here’s Sam Altman, literally today: https://fortune.com/2026/10/28/openai-ceo-sam-altman-gen-z-d...

[–] i_love_retros 1 day ago

Because it's tacky. That's partly why people are upset. AI features and generated output is tacky.

[–] criddell 1 day ago

> One consistent thread was that cooking is supposed to present you with difficulties and challenges and the whole point is figuring them out by yourself.

That’s such a dumb thing to say. When I’m making something for me and my wife, I want a recipe that is idiot proof.

[–] huitzitziltzin 1 day ago

It is so exaggerated and silly to ask for it to be turned off.

It’s completely optional and you only might want to use it if you change the recipe.

Some of these users are overreacting ridiculously to ai.

[–] kipukun 1 day ago

I think the difference here is that they are paying for a feature they are morally opposed to, and thus supporting it. So now they are faced with two options: subsidize the development of technology they don't like, or leave and stop using the service altogether. The outrage comes from feeling morally obligated to leave a paid service despite being otherwise happy with it.

[–] not_a_bot_4sho 1 day ago

> Some of these users are overreacting ridiculously to ai.

These are paying customers with overwhelming negative reaction. It doesn't matter their reasons.

If you want to keep your business, you listen to your customers.

[–] so-gala-massey 1 day ago

For those of us who despise the ai enshittification train, it’s just more slop spreading like acid rain poisoning everything. But if you like ai I can see how it’s no big deal.

[–] crostlybostly 1 day ago

Before AI there were millions of stupid blog posts with roughly the same recipes with minor deviations. It was literally human made slop.

At least AI can give me a concise recipe without ads or making me scroll through some story about a brisk day in october.

[–] so-gala-massey 1 day ago

But it wasn’t on the NYT website. That’s the difference. I could ignore the shitty sites and go to an “authority” (NYT recipes are laughably pretentious but good).

[–] crostlybostly 1 day ago

But you can still ignore / n use AI though

My point is that slop is not an AI problem. Instagram, blog recipes, 207 marvel sequals, countless photos of the same famous tourist spots. Humans were spreading slop like crazy well before AI. It is just now they can make it even easier. Its a human issue, not an AI issue.

[–] queenkjuul 1 day ago

Or you could pay the NYT to hire professional chefs to write you recipes, like these people were. You don't pay them if you're satisfied with slop, the slop is everywhere for free

[–] cavemandaveman 1 day ago

I'm more annoyed by the lazy, reactionary thinking that leads commenters to parrot "ai slop" and "enshittification" in referring to any AI feature in a product. That's the real slop.

[–] so-gala-massey 1 day ago

Not as lazy as your hot take.

[–] thisismyanon2 1 day ago

How is it "so exaggerated and silly" to want to disable a feature in a product you pay for? It blows my mind at how allergic AI bros are to consent.

[–] tantalor 1 day ago

Because that's not how software features work?

You don't ask, "Hey, I don't have a printer, please disable the Print feature in MS word."

No, you just... don't click that button.

[–] tarsierscripter 1 day ago

The print button doesn't persist across all sections of the ribbon, the Copilot button does. They decided people weren't using Copilot enough so they carved out a permanent place for it on the window. If the print button started elbowing other UI elements off the screen to occupy more and more prominent places then you could absolutely bet users would complain.

The last time Microsoft went all-in on an annoying UI element like this? Clippy. How'd that go?

[–] none_to_remain 1 day ago

If someone is really upset about seeing the button, I guess they could ask an AI to make their browser filter it out

[–] shimman 1 day ago

You don't think users, paid users at that, shouldn't have a say in product development? Good lord no wonder the public distrusts the tech community so much.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

Yeah, I think the more broad issue here is that NYT should know better that public sentiment on AI is incredibly negative.

I do find this somewhat paradoxical to the fact that clearly a lot of people use it.

It seems like one of those things where culturally it’s become virtuous to be against it and to say you don’t use it, but privately most people are using it.

Still, I think NYT’s subscriber demographic is likely pretty educated and specifically paying for higher quality content. They don’t want haphazardly tossed together recipe blogs.

AI sentiment is negative enough that all companies who build in AI features need to include a toggle that hides them completely. Otherwise you get user backlash like this.

[–] eichin 1 day ago

So negative that the first I heard about this was with the title "New York Times adds glue to its Cooking App. Users aren't thrilled" (presumably from someone who read the niemanlab article before I did)

[–] mmonaghan 1 day ago

I think there are prob more paid users who want the feature and are willing to pay than those who don't want it, which is why the team built it. They might even believe it brings in new users. It's polarizing but all ai features are lately.

[–] thisismyanon2 1 day ago

TFA says that over 70% of the comments were negative with the remainder being split between positive and neutral. I'm sure the Times thinks it will rope in new users, but I'm sure the Times is factually wrong.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

Comments aren't users. Commenters are statistically biased toward complaints.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

That's quite a strawman.

[–] switchbak 1 day ago

If it's not enabled by default, "disabled" is the natural state, no?

Or is this more intrusive than I imagine?

[–] jug 1 day ago

How would the NYT Cooking website even look like if it was entirely modularized into pieces that could be turned on and off to customize it to perfection for every taste?

This AI thing is not even active nor activated unless you use it. The complaints here sound more reactive to the word AI than anything else to me.

[–] none_to_remain 1 day ago

It already is, it's called a div and I can make it disappear in three clicks in my Firefox.

It would be nice if this power was more available to the normies, but it's the same tool that makes the ad disappear.

[–] mmonaghan 1 day ago

It's a big ask to be able to toggle whole features lol. Just don't use it if you don't like it

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

Disabling the feature means disabling it for everyone.

If you don't want to use it, just don't use it.

[–] hackboyfly 1 day ago

“It blows my mind at how allergic AI bros are to consent.“

You make it sound like you have to use it.

Would you demand your mobile device manufacturer to rollback the features you don’t like and don’t use? Did you consent to it?

The allergy against AI is understandable. But that’s because companies tries to shoehorn it in everywhere. This however sounds like a perfectly fine use case, which is also optional to use.

[–] thisismyanon2 1 day ago

You make it sound like NYT has to include slop in the app and that the only way to do ingredient substitution is with AI.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

No, they didn't make anything sound remotely like that.

[–] queenkjuul 1 day ago

I actually would absolutely love it if my mobile device gave me complete control to remove the parts i don't like and don't use, that'd be lovely. Instead you gotta install Graphene or something.

[–] JohnMakin 1 day ago

“You will do as you are told. The market demands it.”

[–] mmonaghan 1 day ago

Many (not most) NYT Cooking commenters are absolutely the type who hate ai and dont want it anywhere near them, but I think this is a fantastic addition to the app and I'm thankful there's an eng team tracking and backing these features to ensure quality.

I often find myself running the same/similar workflows and I'd prefer to have a dev team backing the solve imo.

[–] tra3 1 day ago

I do this exact workflow with random internet recipes and ChatGPT or Claude pretty frequently. In fact modifying a recipe on the fly has been pretty handy.

The base recipes are still vetted by the staff right?

[–] Zefiroj 1 day ago

AI is fantastic at creating recipes. I've been using it to adjust and tweak recipes according to my cooking experience and my specific equipment, and it tends to do quite well, at least as a first pass. It probably has internalized more science than most recipe creators. And honestly, New York Times cooking recipes are a hit or miss at best.

[–] i_love_retros 1 day ago

Can't you create recipes with your own brain? It's called being creative.

[–] tristanj 1 day ago

The New York Times has approximately 6,000 employees, of which over 2,000 work in engineering. In the AI era, each engineer can output 5 to 10x as much as before, and there are more employees than work to be done. Hence employees work pet projects like this one, that few users are asking for.

[–] arjie 1 day ago

There's no way anyone knows where the limit is of a feature set that is valid for AI enhancement. Substitutions and changes in amounts across a dataset that is not fully pre-taxonomized seems like a pretty good use of AI to be honest.

We've used it for modifications to enjoyable effect a few years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46131280

So it's a matter of execution etc. to see which features stick.

[–] mmonaghan 1 day ago

Few users are asking for it but many are running similar workflows themselves separately. It's a huge value add imo and exactly the right thing an app dev team should be working on.

You rarely get users asking for your next big leap and you often get many users asking for small tweaks (all slightly different).

[–] sashank_1509 1 day ago

I don’t want to be the one to go there but I think it’s ridiculous that NyT has 2000 engineers. GTA 5 had listed 150 SWE in its credits.

[–] Grombobulous 1 day ago

I think we are getting ahead of ourselves if we are to believe the 2,000 number without verifying it.

[–] snowe2010 10 hours ago

same for believing that 5x to 10x number. Funny enough I posted a comment yesterday saying "citation needed" and got a freaking email from an LLM this morning giving me a source that said there's less than a 20% gain, and that was only one study. I actually laughed out loud because of how hilarious it was. Person on the internet makes a ridiculous claim about LLMs and then I get an email hours later from an LLM telling me that the user was full of shit.

[–] shimman 1 day ago

Advertising and marketing tech increases the bloat, I agree. I too think it's insane that Meta has 20,000 engineers for their entire product suite but when you develop for a malware featureset the bloat comes with it.

[–] jibalt 1 day ago

That is not how/why this came about.

[–] snowe2010 1 day ago

> In the AI era, each engineer can output 5 to 10x as much as before

Citation needed

[–] tdeck 1 day ago

> Say you’re cooking braised white beans and greens with parmesan, NYT Cooking app in hand. But you notice that you’re out of chard and only have spinach. Cooking veterans know that chard is a rough-and-tumble green that has some backbone, while spinach is a comparative wimp that will wilt the moment you look at it funny. If you need to sub in spinach for chard, how would the recipe change? Would you, for instance, add the spinach later than you would the chard to account for its pathetic stamina? That’s the sort of thing the new AI feature could account for.

Frankly I can see how this would be useful to some people. At least it would help prevent the ridiculous "I didn't have eggs so I added applesauce, the cake came out all flat IDK what's wrong" type of substitutions.

[–] fn-mote 1 day ago

I wasn’t going for any of this until your comment.

Now the inane two star reviews will only come from people who are in both categories: (no cooking skill) and (no AI).

[–] burnedbyhell 12 hours ago

Eh. Between the 40% price increase and this, I cancelled.

So many times AI has been misleading at best for cooking. I don't doubt there could be benefits but at this point the trust factor is completely missing.

[–] unethical_ban 1 day ago

It seems to be a non-invasive assistant to augment the human-created, human-curated recipes they give.

I think NYT Cooking recipes are sometimes... not that great anyway, I think some of their cooking techniques are sub-par.

As for this quote from a mad user: “Anyone using AI for cooking has no sense of taste and no desire to work out the intricacies of cooking and baking”

What a horrible take! I use AI to remind me of certain simple tips I haven't written down, to give substitution advice, the exact kind of stuff NYT app says it's going to do. I learned to cook through Youtube chefs, some book recipes, and I cook for the fun of it and to eat good food. How judgemental to say that someone using AI to learn isn't interested in food!

[–] queenkjuul 1 day ago

>has previously implemented AI features... <to convert volumes to weights and scale quantities for recipes>

(Paraphrased)

Seriously??? You need AI to multiply the quantities in a recipe for more or less servings? Something I was taught to do by hand as a child and can be done with the most trivial of software since the day software was invented?

I think i do want off mr. sama's wild ride

[–] Zefiroj 1 day ago

Actually, there are some ingredients that you need to increase linearly and some that are good to do in steps, others you actually might need to increase sublinearly and some not at all. And all of that could depend on how an ingredient is used in the recipe. I think this is actually quite useful.