A Filipino developer recently posted jaw-dropping images of authentic-looking but nonexistent Filipino dishes generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
Christopher David, who is currently based in Taguig, Philippines, shared the images with the Facebook group Midjourney Official on Friday.
“Lost dishes of the Philippines,” the Facebook user wrote in his post. “I asked AI to create completely new Filipino dishes that doesn’t exist, but uses Filipino ingredients and cooking techniques.”
The Filipino developer’s nonexistent dishes include pork limuata, which has “pork belly cooked in a tangy tamarind sauce with pineapple and ginger.”
He also shared images of kesong biya (“a dessert featuring layers of creamy carabao milk cheese, crispy rice flour wafters, and sweetened mangosteen jam, served chilled with a drizzle of coconut caramel sauce”) and binalugang dalag (“grilled freshwater fish marinated in a tamarind and sugarcane vinegar sauce, served over a bed of fragrant pandan rice, and garnished with edible flowers”), among others.
To create the imaginary dishes, Christopher David used the AI-powered art generator Midjourney, as well as the text-generating AI program GPT-4, which comes from the company behind ChatGPT.
“[GPT-4] can generate a lot of creative prompts. I was able to create something from scratch,” he told ANCX.
He also explained that he used GPT-4 to pattern the names of the dishes after Filipino food that already exists. However, several of these names include words that either have no meaning or are not present in Filipino vocabulary, such as talukab gisa.
The Filipino developer, who describes himself as a foodie, is just getting started.
In addition to generating dishes using AI tools, Christopher David plans on recreating them in his kitchen.
He most recently recreated tinikim na manok, a “flavorful chicken dish cooked in a sauce made from calamansi, ginger, and coconut milk, garnished with toasted coconut flakes and chopped cilantro,” and shared a video of him cooking the dish on TikTok.
