AI guacamole recipes are here in time for Super Bowl 2024, courtesy of Avocados From Mexico

The perfect guacamole recipe must include ripe, mashed avocados. Fresh lime juice, cilantro, red onion, and spices like salt and cayenne pepper are frequently added to the dish. 

But guacamole’s newest ingredient, courtesy of the nonprofit marketing organization Avocados From Mexico (AFM), is a dash of artificial intelligence.

With the Super Bowl looming and an estimated 250 million pounds of avocados to be consumed in the weeks leading into football’s biggest game of the year, AFM has unveiled a multimodal AI tool called the GuacAImole, which uses image recognition, text, and image generation to create personalized guacamole recipes.

GuacAImole can be used in three different ways. Users can either upload an image of ingredients they have on hand or a completed dish—for example, a plate of chicken wings. They can also opt to respond to text prompts ranging from serving size, to flavor profile, to spice level. The GuacAImole then generates a recipe with an ingredient list, step-by-step directions, and AI-generated images to show what the guacamole should look like.

“We want to make produce as fun and as dynamic as any other food category out there,” says Alvaro Luque, president and CEO of AFM. 

In a demo with Fast Company, a picture of freshly cut salmon was uploaded to the GuacAImole and within a minute, a recipe was shared that featured the combination of one cup of salmon, three ripe avocados, lime juice, cilantro, one red chili pepper, and salt and pepper. Pairing dips were also offered. 

Most recommendations tilt toward savory sensations, though the GuacAImole isn’t afraid of sweets. After uploading an image of Jell-O, the AI pushes a user to add a quarter of a cup of berries to a fairly standard guacamole recipe, creating a slightly sweet and tangy twist on the snack. 

“We wanted to make it simple for the consumers,” says Luque. “We understand that AI is the new big thing. So how can we, as a brand, be creative enough to use the technology to give consumers a solution that would work for you at the right moment, which is the Super Bowl.” 

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But even the GuacAImole comes with some creative constraints. After digesting an image of a couch, an error message of sorts flashes on the screen. “Hmm, that looks . . . interesting. Not sure we can make that better, but here’s a guac recipe that’s always good!” Some ingredients that wouldn’t pair well with avocados will also guide users to more traditional recipes. 

GuacAImole was built with a script for OpenAI’s GPT-4 with Vision, which analyzes images that users upload. After the image is decoded, GPT-4 kicks in to take the ingredients or dish and create a guacamole recipe. That output is also fed into DALL-E 3 to generate the concept imagery. 

“We knew that we wanted images to come through and that’s why two out of the three multimodal AI tools that we are using are image recognition and image generation,” says Luque.

The produce marketer is launching the AI tool to capitalize on the popularity of guacamole during Super Bowl festivities. In the four weeks leading up to Super Bowl weekend, the amount of avocados that Americans consume would cover a football field with more than 75 feet of guacamole. AFM has been a steady Super Bowl advertiser, only skipping the big game twice since 2015, in 2021 and this year.

“One hundred percent our objective is to come back,” says Luque. ”We see it as a hiatus in our Super Bowl history.” Through this past football season, AFM has put a greater emphasis on college football.

GuacAImole comes a year after AFM fumbled last year’s AI activation. The group had intended to use ChatGPT as part of AFM’s Super Bowl campaign, but later nixed those plans. Luque says it was a “communications mistake,” explaining it is one thing to use ChatGPT and quite another to say you are partnering together. 

This year, the playbook is more focused on the tool that AFM created for consumers. “They want to be creative and they are entertaining friends and family,” says Luque. “So this is a tool that could give you a lot for game day to be different.”