World
Kimuraya, Japan’s oldest bakery, teamed up with a company and produced, through artificial intelligence, “romantic bread”, which comes with five different flavors that we generally associate with love.
NEC Reproduction
In the month of Valentine’s Day, Japan’s oldest bakery, Kimuraya, in partnership with NEC Corp (a Japanese electronics company), produced “Ren AI Pan”, which translates to Artificial Intelligence Romantic Bread (IA).
This creation was based on the analysis of conversations from a relationship reality show and approximately 35 thousand music lyrics that mentioned fruit or sweets. In this analysis, they identified five key feelings of romance: moment when they meet, first meeting, jealousy, broken heart and mutual love. From this identification, the pastry “worked its magic” and transformed these feelings into the flavors of fluffy steamed bread.
The “Date with Destiny” bread tastes like cotton candy, which represents the sweet and airy emotion of the first signs of passion. “Jealousy” tastes like French fries, truffle oil and raisins. “Primeiro Encontro” has citrus touches, such as lemon and orange peel, and “Amor Mútuo” is a bittersweet mix of honey, peach and passion fruit. The last flavor is “Tears of Separation”, with an apple cider and grape flavor.
NEC Reproduction
“The selection of ingredients was done by AI, but our role was to transform them into bread,” said Yuki Kitazawa, from Kimuraya bakery. “We took into account the colors used to visually express emotions related to romance, looking for an appealing and pop appearance for the Romantic Bread.”
The motive for this research was to understand how to awaken the interest of younger generations in love. The bakery found that an increasing number of young people say they are not interested in relationships. However, there are still a good number of them who want to go on dates, fall in love and live happily ever after with someone.