Google AI Summaries Are Ruining the Livelihoods of Recipe Writers
- Reference: 0180418917
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/12/18/2152215/google-ai-summaries-are-ruining-the-livelihoods-of-recipe-writers
- Source link:
> Over the past few years, bloggers who have not secured their sites behind a paywall have seen their carefully developed and tested recipes show up, often without attribution and in a bastardized form, in ChatGPT replies. They have seen dumbed-down versions of their recipes in AI-assembled cookbooks available for digital downloads on Etsy or on AI-built websites that bear a superficial resemblance to an old-school human-written blog. Their photos and videos, meanwhile, are repurposed in Facebook posts and Pinterest pins that link back to this digital slop.
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> Recipe writers have no legal recourse because recipes [2]generally are not copyrightable . Although copyright protects published or recorded work, they do not cover sets of instructions (although it can apply to the particular wording of those instructions). Without this essential IP, many food bloggers earn their living by offering their work for free while using ads to make money. But now they fear that casual users who rely on search engines or social media to find a recipe for dinner will conflate their work with AI slop and stop trusting online recipe sites altogether.
"For websites that depend on the advertising model," says Matt Rodbard, the founder and editor-in-chief of the website Taste, "I think this is an extinction event in many ways."
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/dec/15/google-ai-recipes-food-bloggers
[2] https://theconversation.com/recipetin-eats-founder-accuses-cookbook-author-of-plagiarism-can-a-recipe-be-copyrighted-a-legal-expert-explains-255596
Re: (Score:2)
> Recipes were mostly complete before the internet was even invented
But the context around them has changed a lot. E.g.
1. Newer devices have made it easier to do certain sorts of cooking, but it needs to modify the recipe ever so slightly for best results. E.g. Microwaves have become more common, air fryers.
2. People doing 2 jobs in the last few decades are now not looking for BEST possible taste like the housewives of 1970s, but acceptable taste, hints at once a week meal prep work, and quick to make recipes.
3. Availability of different types of partially cooked, precooked
Don't waste time with recipes on internet... (Score:3)
...classic recipe books by famous cooks (Bocuse, Escoffier, Artusi, ...) are cheap, often available in the public domain or at bargain shops. Reading and learning from these works is the best thing you can do. I personally recommend Bocuse's recipe book. Cooking is mostly about finding the right ingredients at the right time. Neither the youtuber living on the other emisphere nor AI can know about what is available at your local market (and I underline *market*, not supermarket, Amazon Fresh, or so).
The ULTIMATE Slashdot Comment regarding Google AI (Score:2)
Hi lovelies! Welcome back to my little corner of the comment section! I am so incredibly excited to share this comment with you today. It is a family favorite, passed down through generations of posters, and it is honestly a total game-changer for weeknight reading. But before we get to the actual text of my opinion on this article, I just have to share a little story about my journey with digital content.
[ JUMP TO COMMENT ] (Link does not work)
It was a crisp autumn morning in 1998. The leaves were turning
stand in line (Score:2)
Many jobs are getting wiped out, not just recipe creators
They shat in their bed (Score:4, Informative)
Now they should sleep in it. Recipe sites have long been part of the worst of the internet with auto playing videos, pop-over adverts, and 15 pages of rubbish before the actual recipe.
The only sane way to get a recipe online is to look at the picture on Google, and if it looks good, paste the link into [1]https://www.justtherecipe.com/ [justtherecipe.com]
[1] https://www.justtherecipe.com/
Re: (Score:2)
100% this. Recipe sites jumped hard on the SEO bandwagon, and became so hated for it that "having to scroll down 15 pages to actually find the recipe" became the butt of a joke.
Re: (Score:2)
The ones that didn't do that didn't get shown in Google search results, so they didn't get any traffic.
There may be a conflict of interest with Google directing traffic to websites that show ads.
Re: (Score:2)
Not a cause and effect situation. Given this is a universal LMM issue across the web, recipe site bed shatting isn't why the LMM search engines aren't linking to source materials.
Re: (Score:2)
The point is that people who willingly contributed to the enshittification of the internet have no ground to stand no to complain about the enshittification of the internet.