Trying to make food taste like “falling in love” may sound frivolous, but it demonstrates the power of AI as a non-traditional way of formulating food products. Using their AI, Giuseppe, NotCo include pineapple and cabbage juices in their milk and strawberry extract in their chicken. Who can honestly say they’d even have considered such ingredients in these products? AI has the potential to create a whole new food category
What are the advantages of AI?
Time to market has never been more important, both to meet ever changing consumer demands and for competitive advantage. AI has massive advantages in the speed of formulation as well as the ability to consider combinations outside of the human imagination. As NotCo’s co-founder and chief technology officer Karim Pichara says “You can spend weeks and months and fine tune that [formulation], and come up with a final result. But with our technology, they can solve that in a matter of few days.” This comes from their data based approach which starts a formulation from scratch, without preconceptions.
Giuseppe can even advise the availability of its recommended ingredients. This helps with scalability and also reveals potential opportunities in the market.
In the long term no food company will survive without access to a sophisticated AI.
The future
As I’ve written before, AI offers tremendous opportunities as a major driver of the future of food. In this case it’s manufacturers who are the major beneficiaries. But AI will also benefit consumers more directly as they personalise their diets.
The key opportunity is that “eventually, NotCo hopes to create plant-based products that are unlike any made with animal-derived ingredients, using technology to make unique items and flavors.”
Creating a whole new food category is an exciting outcome for all consumers
