NYT Cooking Expands AI Recipe Tools, Subscribers Push Back

"The internet is full of AI cooking content. I pay you because I prefer mine done by people." That is a subscriber in New Jersey, writing in the comments beneath Nieman Lab's report on the latest AI additions to NYT Cooking.

The new tool lets subscribers apply modifications to recipes, with ingredient substitutions as the headline use case. It is currently available to all Cooking subscribers on the iOS app, with plans to make it available more broadly soon. The Times had previously rolled out AI features for converting volume-based and weight-based measurements and for scaling recipes up or down.

Genevieve Ko, NYT Cooking's senior editor and columnist, pre-empted the pushback in her announcement, naming objections about "the impact of data centers," "the concentration of power among A.I. companies," and "the risk of A.I. escaping our control." She framed the feature as serving "the tactile physical pleasure of cooking" and getting a "very real, very human creation" on the table.

Readers were not persuaded. Dozens asked for a way to turn the feature off. A subscriber in Pittsburgh wrote: "Nobody wants this, it's bad for cooking, it's bad for the NYT." A commenter in Los Angeles called the decision one that "misses the mark by such a wide margin it's baffling."

The feature is optional and only modifies recipes that humans created, rather than generating recipes from scratch. That distinction, judging by the comments, has not landed with the paying audience.