From: bencollver@tilde.pink   
      
   Google AI Recipe Extinction Event   
   =================================   
      
   AI Mode is mangling recipes by merging instructions from multiple   
   creators–-and causing them huge dips in ad traffic.   
      
   Aimee Levitt   
   Mon 15 Dec 2025 10.00 EST   
      
   This past March, when Google began rolling out its AI Mode search   
   capability, it began offering AI-generated recipes. The recipes were   
   not all that intelligent. The AI had taken elements of similar   
   recipes from multiple creators and Frankensteined them into something   
   barely recognizable. In one memorable case, the Google AI failed to   
   distinguish the satirical website the Onion from legitimate recipe   
   sites and advised users to cook with non-toxic glue.   
      
   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.   
      
   Recipe writers have no legal recourse because recipes 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.   
      
   "There are a lot of people that are scared to even talk about what's   
   going on because it is their livelihood," says Jim Delmage who, with   
   his wife, Tara, runs the blog and YouTube channel Sip and Feast.   
      
   Matt Rodbard, the founder and editor-in-chief of the website Taste,   
   is even more pessimistic. Taste used to publish recipes more   
   frequently, but now it mostly focuses on journalism and a podcast   
   (which Rodbard hosts). "For websites that depend on the advertising   
   model," he says, "I think this is an extinction event in many ways."   
      
   The holiday season is traditionally when food bloggers earn most of   
   their ad revenue. For many, this year has been slower than usual. One   
   blogger, Carrie Forrest of Clean Eating Kitchen, told Bloomberg that   
   in the past two years, she has lost 80% of her traffic.   
      
   Others, like Delmage and Karen Tedesco, the author of the blog   
   Familystyle Food, say their numbers, and ad revenue, have remained   
   steady--so far. They attribute this to focusing their energies less   
   on trying to game the search engines than on the long-term goal of   
   attracting regular followers--and, in Delmage's case, viewers.   
      
   Tedesco's strategy has been to create recipes that rely on her   
   experience and technical knowhow honed by years in restaurant   
   kitchens and as a personal chef. Her Italian meatball recipe, for   
   example, based on her mother's, includes advice about which meat to   
   use, an explanation of why milk-soaked breadcrumbs are essential for   
   texture, and a dozen process photos and a video.   
      
   But she is still worried about the potential impact of AI. When she   
   recently did a Google search for "Italian meatballs", Familystyle   
   Food appeared as the top result. Then she switched to AI Mode. There,   
   she found the recipe had been Frankensteined--or "synthesized" as   
   Gemini put it--into a new recipe with nine other sources (including   
   Sip and Feast and a Washington Post recipe for Greek meatballs). The   
   AI-generated recipe was little more than a list of ingredients and   
   six basic steps with none of the details that make Tedesco's recipe   
   unique.   
      
   AI Mode linked to all 10 recipes, including Tedesco's, but, she says,   
   "I don't think many people are actually clicking on the source links.   
   At this point, they're absolutely trusting in the results that are   
   getting thrown in their faces."   
      
   Other bloggers have seen a more definite impact on their viewership.   
   Adam Gallagher, who runs Inspired Taste with his wife, Joanne, and   
   who has become an outspoken critic of AI on social media, told the   
   podcast Marketing O'Clock that since spring, he has noticed that   
   while the number of times viewers saw links to the site on Google has   
   increased, the number of actual site visitors has decreased. This   
   indicates, to him, that users are satisfied with the search engine's   
   AI interpretation of Inspired Taste's recipes.   
      
   After the Gallaghers posted about the discrepancy on X and Instagram,   
   a number of readers replied to say they had not realized there was a   
   difference between the recipes on the blog and the version that   
   showed up in Google searches. Perhaps they had also appreciated the   
   convenience of not having to click on another website, especially   
   when Google's page design was so clean and uncluttered.   
      
   Rodbard acknowledges that many food blogs have gotten ugly and   
   overloaded with ads, which has exacerbated the problem. "Ad tech on   
   these recipe blogs has gotten so bad, so many pop-up windows and so   
   much crashing, we kind of lost as publishers," he says.   
      
   According to Tom Critchlow, the EVP of audience growth at Raptive, a   
   media company that works with many food bloggers to find advertisers,   
   it isn't ads that are driving viewers away. It's Google itself, with   
   its changes to the algorithm and now with AI Mode, that's making the   
   sites harder to find.   
      
   There is some hope though: a survey of 3,000 US adults commissioned   
   by Raptive showed that the more interaction people had with AI, the   
   less they wanted to engage with it, and nearly half the respondents   
   rated AI content less trustworthy than content made by a human.   
      
   But unless the public rebels against AI Mode, there is only so much   
   bloggers can do. They can block OpenAI's training crawler, which   
   gathers information that ChatGPT uses to create content, including   
   its own recipe generator, but theyare not necessarily willing to make   
   themselves invisible to web searches; as Delmage puts it: "You can't   
   bite the hand that feeds you."   
      
   There is also the option of moving over to a subscription model, such   
   as Substack or Patreon, and keeping the recipes behind a paywall, but   
   both Tedesco and Delmage point out that the most successful   
   Substackers, like Caroline Chambers or David Lebovitz, came to the   
   platform with much more substantial followings than they have. "If I   
   were to give up my website or even try to go over to Substack, I   
   would be broke," Tedesco says.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)