AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet -- And Thanksgiving Dinner

[Nevilledog]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-25/ai-slop-recipes-are-taking-over-the-internet-and-thanksgiving-dinner

No paywall link
https://archive.li/PJ9bD

Eb Gargano has been writing recipes online long enough to anticipate the seasonal rhythms of her web traffic. The Easy Peasy Foodie creator can predict when US readers begin searching for her stress-free turkey instructions, or when her Christmas cake will start its annual climb up Google search results.

This year, those familiar patterns are breaking. Instead of sending home cooks to her decade-old, well-tested recipes, Google increasingly inserts AI-generated summaries stitched together from bits of her work and others’ that often get the basics wrong. An AI-assembled version of Gargano’s Christmas cake, for instance, would have people cooking a 6-inch cake for 3 to 4 hours at 320°F (160°C).

“You’d end up with charcoal!” she said. Meanwhile, traffic to her turkey recipe is already down 40% year over year.

Recipe bloggers like Gargano said it’s the first holiday season where consumers are starting to trust AI answers in search and chatbots, as well as recipe content remixed by AI, which can be hard to distinguish from the real thing. That’s not just bad for business; it’s potentially ruinous for a holiday dinner table if home cooks, inspired by pretty AI-generated photos, try recipes that turn out unappetizing or that defy the laws of chemistry. In interviews, 22 independent food creators said that AI-generated “recipe slop” is distorting nearly every way people find cooking advice online, damaging their businesses while causing consumers to waste time and money.

Across the internet, writers say their vetted recipes are hidden by the flood. Pinterest feeds are stuffed with AI-generated images of food that the attached instructions won’t achieve; Google’s AI Overviews surface error-filled cooking steps that siphon away clicks from professionals. Meanwhile, Facebook content farms use AI-generated images of supposedly delicious but impossible dishes to the top of people’s feeds, in an attempt to turn any clicks into ad revenue.

*snip*

[bucolic_frolic]

1. A tidbit I found just now: "Do not thaw frozen cranberries."

What are you supposed to do, eat them frozen?

[Nevilledog]

2. You found that in a recipe?

[bucolic_frolic]

3. It was in those little pop-down menus when I googled freezing cranberries

I think they meant don't thaw them before baking them in a recipe, but it was stated as one single sentence just as I posted.

[Raftergirl]

12. I don't thaw my cranberries before cooking them to make my sauce. I just rinse them and put them in the

water and bring it to a boil. Then I stir it until the berries pop.

I buy the Ocean Spray cranberries in the bag and freeze them until I am going to make sauce.

[leftstreet]

4. You don't like AI Banana Bread?

Link to tweet

?s=20



DURec

[ms liberty]

5. Gawd, that is a disgusting, inedible mess.

[mwmisses4289]

6. Guess we'll have to go back to the old fashioned way of recipes-

3x5 cards handwritten by a loved one or actual cook books that are published before 2020.

[Ms. Toad]

7. Just turn off the AI search option. n/t

[GentryDixon]

8. Search whatever -ai. 🤷‍♀️

[Ms. Toad]

9. I've got mine turned off permanently, so the search bar itself automatically excludes AI.

Saves me trying to remember how to turn it off.

[mwmisses4289]

10. I was being a bit sarcastic, although I do have several cookbooks.

I use the -ai thing.
How do you turn it off on your browser?

[QueerDuck]

11. YouTuber Ann Reardon (How 2 Cook That)...

Does a lot of debunking of these AI recipes and the 5-minute crafts recipes

[Nevilledog]

14. Thanks!

[Raftergirl]

13. I find recipes all the time on food sites, none of which are AI generated. Just put in what you want in the search

bar and hundreds of recipe will come up on all different food sites.

I use Duck Duck Go for searches.

[lindysalsagal]

15. I ordered a travel book and it was obviously ai. No credits, notes, details

Amazon just refunded me. Didn't want it returned. They're in on it.