AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet -- And Thanksgiving Dinner [View all]

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

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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.

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