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In between the many predictions of professional displacement and civilizational doom at the hands of artificial intelligence (A.I.) tools like ChatGPT, people are discovering some genuinely useful ways to incorporate them into the more mundane parts of life. They’re adept at improving emails, recommending new bands, and helping with homework.

Folks are putting ChatGPT to work in the kitchen, too, to great effect. In a recent Twitter thread, a Silicon Valley CEO described his “surprisingly delightful” ChatGPT-powered dinner party where the A.I. program suggested fusion themes and generated a menu, serving sizes, and cooking instructions. As someone who spends far too much time digging online for recipes, I decided to see whether ChatGPT could make me more efficient in the kitchen.

I started by asking for cuisine suggestions, which ChatGPT spat out with minimal prodding. After it gave me a laundry list of options, explaining why certain flavors and ingredients would pair well, I decided on a Moroccan-inspired menu consisting of an entree, a vegetable side, and a cocktail. Not every option was a winner, and plenty of the recipes I got during the discovery process featured errors only a robot would makefor instance, a Mediterranean-style chicken and chorizo stew that featured just one cup of broth, and an ostensibly Moroccan-themed mule that simply repeated the ingredients of a Moscow mule.

Still, it took some 15 minutes to receive dozens of recipe suggestions tailored to my cuisine and flavor preferences, with steps and ingredients fully spelled out such that I could pick the dishes best suited to my on-hand ingredients and available time. I settled on three promising options: Moroccan chicken skewers with spiced yogurt sauce, Moroccan-spiced roasted carrots, and a Marrakech mule.

Barring a few personal tweaksadding more paprika and introducing honey to the yogurt sauce, adding olive oil to the (otherwise dry) chicken marinade, baking the skewers instead of grilling themI was impressed with ChatGPT’s output. The mule, a combination of lime, orange, honey, and ginger, was a real treat. The chicken and carrots were a bit redundant, with ChatGPT proposing essentially the same seasonings for bothbut they were flavorful nonetheless. As an experiment in reducing my planning time while maintaining or improving recipe quality, I have no complaints.

Kitchen-helper A.I. has been in the works for a while now. In 2014, Bon Apptit ‘s test kitchen teamed up with IBM’s Chef Watson, a recipe-creating computer program, to invent new dishes. Working with an information bank of 10,000 Bon Apptit recipes, Watson could “understand and reproduce their underlying logic and style” to propose novel ones, many involving unique ingredient pairings that don’t go together intuitively, but instead work “on a fundamental chemical level.”

Promising, but it wasn’t all smooth sailing. Testing the program in 2016, The Guardian ‘s Leo Benedictus noted that “Chef Watson recommends an ingredient called ‘Mollusk’, which it helpfully explains is ‘the sixth full-length album by Ween.'” Watson’s performance in a cooking challenge against chef Yotam Ottolenghi yielded “a flavour rather close to the farmyard, but not uneatable.” (Of course, Ottolenghi and his team had the advantage of being able to “taste and discuss flavours, colours, temperatures, in a way that Watson can’t.”) Florian Pinel, Chef Watson’s lead engineer, told Benedictus that a feedback mechanism could be on its way in the future.

ChatGPT is highly adept in that way. When I told it that I don’t have a grill, it suggested I saute. When I rejected its seafood recipes, it switched to chicken options. When I mentioned that I didn’t have the mint or cilantro the spiced yogurt recipe called for, it suggested I substitute coriander or parsley to compensate for the missing flavor. (To the robot’s credit, both fit the Moroccan theme.)

Still, A.I.-generated recipes haven’t escaped criticism. Some of that centers on cultural appropriation concerns: A Food and Wine ChatGPT experiment prompted the author to worry that a Korean BBQ nacho recipe “did not accurately represent the complexity of Korean cuisine, and it felt like a superficial appropriation of cultural recipes” that lacked “contextual understanding of what truly constitutes Korean BBQ.” Tash McGill, president of Food Writers New Zealand, warned that these recipes “can easily stray into issues with cultural appropriation or untested techniques.” A 2014 Slate article fretted over the intellectual property implications of A.I. recipes, also wondering who might be held liable if an A.I.-driven commercial kitchen caused an allergic reaction.

Intellectual property issues will be ironed out in time, and A.I.-induced allergic reactions are unlikely to be problematic in private kitchens. As for cultural appropriation concerns, those misunderstand one of ChatGPT’s biggest advantages as a cooking tool: its ability to creatively incorporate snippets of a culture’s cuisine to varying degrees and in ways that consider the user’s culinary preferences and background. You can start with a format you lovesalads or soups, for exampleand ask ChatGPT to use it as a canvas for an unfamiliar cuisine. Or you can start with a cuisine you love and ask ChatGPT to marry it to a new one. From Mediterranean-Mexican to Japanese-Italian, the resulting recipes sound surprisingly delicious, even if they’d make culinary purists blush.

As a kitchen assistant, ChatGPT is most helpful when its efforts are combined with human onesvetting for errors, adjusting seasonings to taste, and making ingredient or equipment limitations known. A.I. won’t destroy cooking, but it has huge potential to make chefs more creative and efficient.

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MP tells Sky News she was attacked online by Tate brothers after Commons contribution

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MP tells Sky News she was attacked online by Tate brothers after Commons contribution

An MP has told Sky News she was attacked online by the Tate brothers after she participated in a debate in the House of Commons about violence against women.

The controversial duo, Andrew and Tristan Tate, are facing charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK – all of which they deny.

But they are still very active online, and according to Sorcha Eastwood, the MP for Lagan Valley, are targeting her.

In a document seen by Sky News, Tristan Tate has highlighted one of the MP’s tweets and writes in private correspondence: “MP, nice target, can we sue her?”

Sorcha Eastwood says at first she thought the replies were from parody accounts and not the Tate brothers.

Her original tweet was about Elon Musk, not the Tate brothers. The MP said Musk’s tweets should be looked at through a counter-extremism lens.

“I was really concerned, I was concerned because to me that is a direct attack for want of a better phrase on me serving my constituents.

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“I couldn’t believe that they decided to pick this random Northern Irish MP. The fact that it wasn’t even about them. This is something I didn’t go looking for.

“I think from my perspective, it’s a very, very sinister attempt to shut down important voices in public life, political discourse.”

It was only when she started noticing an uptick in abuse from other accounts she realised she had encountered some of the brothers’ followers.

“I had rape threats. I had death threats. I had people saying I should be hung from a lamppost. I had people saying I should be chopped into liver. I also had people then who were like we’ll waste 15 minutes raping Sorcha Eastwood.”

Andrew and Tristan Tate
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A representative for the Tate brothers told Sky News that there was no targeted campaign against Sorcha Eastwood

A representative for the Tate brothers told Sky News that there was no targeted campaign against her.

They said: “Ms Eastwood has a distorted view regarding social media if she believes one is required to ‘invite or ask’ people to interact.

“Tristan Tate is entitled to his view in relation to her tweet regarding Elon Musk.”

The self-styled “misogynist influencer” Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan have both been charged with human trafficking, face allegations of trafficking minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering in Romania.

There is also a European arrest warrant for them as they are facing separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK. They deny all charges.

Ms Eastwood now worries for others who don’t have a platform like her and who may not feel like they can speak out.

“If this is what has happened to me I have absolutely no doubt that this has happened to others where they have been attempted to be silenced.”

Keir Starmer has previously commented on the Tate brothers’ case in the Commons saying it is “a live issue”, but adding that “the principle is absolutely clear” in relation to whether the brothers should face justice.

Sorcha Eastwood says she wants to see the government do much more to protect against abuse online.

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Tate brothers deny wrongdoing

“I think ultimately the government has taken the wrong course on this. They need to step up.

“This should be an issue of national security as far as the radicalisation of young people online. It should be an issue in terms of the levels of misinformation, disinformation and the lack of trust that is had in our politics right across the UK and Europe.

“I want the government to help me, help every other person to crack down on this and get serious about it. And the only way they’ll be able to do that, is by hitting these tech companies in the only language which they understand, which is money and via robust legislation.”

A government spokesperson said: “Violence against women and girls is a scourge on our society which is why we have set out an unprecedented mission to halve these crimes within a decade.

“Tackling illegal abuse both online and offline is central to supporting victims and preventing harm in our communities and we will not hesitate to strengthen laws to deliver this mission.

“Last month, parts of the Online Safety Act came into force meaning companies must take action to protect users from illegal material including extreme sexual violence.

“Further protections from this summer will require platforms to protect children from harmful, misogynistic, and violent content.”

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De minimis trade loophole that boosted Chinese online retailers to end May 2

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De minimis trade loophole that boosted Chinese online retailers to end May 2

A driver for an independent contractor to FedEx delivers packages on Cyber Monday in New York, US, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2023.

Stephanie Keith | Bloomberg | Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order shutting the de minimis trade loophole, effective May 2.

Trump in February abruptly ended the de minimis trade exemption, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the U.S. duty-free. The order overwhelmed U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees and caused the U.S. Postal Service to temporarily halt packages from China and Hong Kong. Within days of its announcement, Trump reversed course and delayed the cancellation of the provision.

Wednesday’s announcement, which came alongside a set of sweeping new tariffs, gives customs officials, retailers and logistics companies more time to prepare. Goods that qualify under the de minimis exemption will be subject to a duty of either 30% of their value, or $25 per item. That rate will increase to $50 per item on June 1, the White House said.

Use of the de minimis provision has exploded in recent years as shoppers flock to Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein, which offer ultra-low cost apparel, electronics and other items. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection has said it processed more than 1.3 billion de minimis shipments in 2024, up from over 1 billion shipments in 2023.

Critics of the provision say it provides an unfair advantage to Chinese e-commerce companies and creates an influx of packages that are “subject to minimal documentation and inspection,” raising concerns around counterfeit and unsafe goods.

The Trump administration has sought to close the loophole over concerns that it facilitates shipments of fentanyl and other illicit substances on the claims that the packages are less likely to be inspected by customs agents.

Temu and Shein have taken steps to grow their operations in the U.S. as the de minimis loophole has come under greater scrutiny. After onboarding sellers with inventory in U.S. warehouses, Temu recently began steering shoppers to those items on its website, allowing it to speed up deliveries. Shein opened distribution centers in states including Illinois and California in 2022, and a supply chain hub in Seattle last year.

WATCH: President Trump signs executive orders for reciprocal tariffs

Pres. Trump signs executive orders for reciprocal tariffs

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Donald Trump announces sweeping global trade tariffs – including 10% on UK imports

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Donald Trump announces sweeping global trade tariffs - including 10% on UK imports

Donald Trump has announced a 10% trade tariff on all imports from the UK – as he unleashed sweeping tariffs across the globe.

Speaking at a White House event entitled “Make America Wealthy Again”, the president held up a chart detailing the worst offenders – which also showed the new tariffs the US would be imposing.

“This is Liberation Day,” he told a cheering audience of supporters, while hitting out at foreign “cheaters”.

Follow live: Trump tariffs latest

He claimed “trillions” of dollars from the “reciprocal” levies he was imposing on others’ trade barriers would provide relief for the US taxpayer and restore US jobs and factories.

Mr Trump said the US has been “looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” by other nations.

President Donald Trump holds a signed executive order during an event to announce new tariffs in the Rose Garden of the White House, Wednesday, April 2, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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Pic: AP

His first tariff announcement was a 25% duty on all car imports from midnight – 5am on Thursday, UK time.

Mr Trump confirmed the European Union would face a 20% reciprocal tariff on all other imports. China’s rate was set at 34%.

The UK’s rate of 10% was perhaps a shot across the bows over the country’s 20% VAT rate, though the president’s board suggested a 10% tariff imbalance between the two nations.

It was also confirmed that further US tariffs were planned on some individual sectors including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical mineral imports.

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Trump’s tariffs explained

The ramping up of duties promises to be painful for the global economy. Tariffs on steel and aluminium are already in effect.

The UK government signalled there would be no immediate retaliation.

Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “We will always act in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers. That’s why, throughout the last few weeks, the government has been fully focused on negotiating an economic deal with the United States that strengthens our existing fair and balanced trading relationship.

“The US is our closest ally, so our approach is to remain calm and committed to doing this deal, which we hope will mitigate the impact of what has been announced today.

“We have a range of tools at our disposal and we will not hesitate to act. We will continue to engage with UK businesses including on their assessment of the impact of any further steps we take.

“Nobody wants a trade war and our intention remains to secure a deal. But nothing is off the table and the government will do everything necessary to defend the UK’s national interest.”

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Who showed up for Trump’s tariff address?

The EU has pledged to retaliate, which is a problem for Northern Ireland.

Should that scenario play out, the region faces the prospect of rising prices because all its imports are tied to EU rules under post-Brexit trading arrangements.

It means US goods shipped to Northern Ireland would be subject to the EU’s reprisals.

The impact of a trade war would be expected to be widely negative, with tit-for-tat tariffs risking job losses, a ramping up of prices and cooling of global trade.

Research for the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested more than 25,000 direct jobs in the UK car manufacturing industry alone could be at risk from the tariffs on car exports to the US.

The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) had said the tariff costs could not be absorbed by manufacturers and may lead to a review of output.

The tariffs now on UK exports pose a big risk to growth and the so-called headroom Chancellor Rachel Reeves was forced to restore to the public finances at the spring statement, risking further spending cuts or tax rises ahead to meet her fiscal rules.

Read more:
What do Trump’s tariffs mean for the UK?
The rewards and risks for US as trade war intensifies

A member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), David Miles, told MPs on Tuesday that US tariffs at 20% or 25% maintained on the UK for five years would “knock out all the headroom the government currently has”.

But he added that a “very limited tariff war” that the UK stays out of could be “mildly positive”.

He said: “There’s a bit of trade that will get diverted to the UK, and some of the exports from China, for example, that would have gone to the US, they’ll be looking for a home for them in the rest of the world.

“And stuff would be available in the UK a bit cheaper than otherwise would have been. So there is one, not central scenario at all, which is very, very mildly potentially positive to the UK. All the other ones which involve the UK facing tariffs are negative, and they’re negative to very different extents.”

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