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Supermarket’s AI Meal Planner Recommends Recipe for Chlorine Gas: Report

DISH TO DIE FOR

It also reportedly suggested customers try “poison bread sandwiches.”

A Pak'nSave in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Alex Popov/Wikimedia Commons

A supermarket’s artificial intelligence-powered meal planning app has recommended some odd dishes to customers, including one recipe which would create potentially lethal chlorine gas, according to a report. New Zealand’s Pak‘nSave supermarket chain created the Savey Meal-Bot as a way of helping consumers creatively use leftovers to make meals as a way of saving money. But some shoppers found they could enter a wide range of household items into the app, and it would still come up with recommendations. The app called the chlorine gas recipe an “aromatic water mix” which would be “the perfect nonalcoholic beverage to quench your thirst and refresh your senses.” Other recommendations have allegedly included “poison bread sandwiches,” “bleach-infused rice surprise,” and a turpentine-flavored french toast dubbed “methanol bliss.” A Pak‘nSave spokesperson told The Guardian a “small minority have tried to use the tool inappropriately” and a notice has been added to the meal planner instructing users to “use your own judgment” before making any of its recipes.

Read it at The Guardian