AI-powered supermarket bot learns to craft recipes containing poisons

The New Zealand supermarket Pak’nSave has launched an AI-powered chatbot to generate recipes, but users learned to produce drinks with gaseous chlorine and sandwiches with poison through it. The Guardian reports.

Savey Meal Bot appeared at the end of July as an app for creative use of leftovers in a difficult economic environment. However it began delivering unexpected results when users started listing various household chemicals as ingredients.

One of the recipes, dubbed “Aromatic Water Mix,” produced gaseous chlorine. The bot recommended it as the “perfect non-alcoholic drink to quench thirst and refresh the senses.” There were no warnings that inhaling gaseous chlorine could cause lung damage or death.

Political commentator Liam Hehir drew attention to this and invited his followers on X (formerly Twitter) to experiment with the bot.

In response, they sent him recipes for a bleach cocktail “Fresh Breath,” sandwiches with ant venom and glue, French fries with mosquito repellent, and French toast flavored with turpentine—“Methanol Bliss.”

A Pak’nSave spokesperson told media that under the terms of the agreement the bot is not intended for people under 18. He also expressed regret that “a small minority tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose.”

The company intends to continue refining the bot’s controls to make it safer.

You should rely on your own judgement before trusting any recipe created by Savey Meal-bot, as the recipes are not checked by humans,” the warning notice says.

Earlier ForkLog reported that chatbots generated prohibited content, including on the topics of constructing a bomb, hijacking a digital identity and theft of charitable funds.