Can Artificial Intelligence Transform the Culinary Arts?

In 2026, the Chicago-based restaurant Next will feature a nine-course tasting menu, each dish crafted by a different chef. Among them is an imagined 33-year-old woman from Wisconsin, whose culinary background blends influences from pioneering modernist Ferran Adrià, revered sushi master Jiro Ono, and the iconic French culinary innovator Auguste Escoffier.

The impressive résumé is particularly striking given that Auguste Escoffier passed away in 1935.

Next’s chef and co-owner, Grant Achatz, created this fictional chef named Jill by providing ChatGPT with her fabricated name, career history, and family background. He then asked the AI to propose dishes that would reflect her diverse culinary influences.

If successful, Achatz plans to continue refining Jill’s recipes through ongoing prompts, alongside those of eight other invented chefs, resulting in a menu largely composed with the assistance of artificial intelligence.

“My goal is for the AI to handle as much of the creative process as possible, short of the actual preparation,” Achatz explained.

While generative AI has increasingly been adopted in the restaurant industry for operational tasks such as inventory management and staff scheduling, chefs have been slower to embrace AI’s potential in creative recipe development—even as artists, musicians, and writers have actively collaborated with these technologies.