![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/an-ai-generated-recipe-in-the-style-of-chef-ben-shewry-title-64MJ5XL3GFD6NGOWFF3T4XPDLM.jpg\")
<\/p>\nA renowned New Zealand chef and restaurateur has urged Australians to take their creativity seriously, warning the rise of artificial intelligence cannot replace inventiveness.<\/p>\n
Ben Shewry, the owner of award-winning Melbourne restaurant Attica, put the limits of AI to the test when he gave it a simple recipe prompt, then served the dish to 90 diners.<\/p>\n
“Create a World’s 50 Best Restaurants dish in the style of Ben Shewry,” the chef known for his use of native Australian and New Zealand ingredients said he wrote into ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
Taranaki-born Shewry received a comically overwrought recipe in return, titled The First Rain on Dry Earth, which featured paperbark-smoked kangaroo tortilla, edible clay crisp, native herb oil and “raindrop broth”.<\/p>\n
In a speech at the National Press Club on Wednesday, he told a crowd he tried to prompt the artificial intelligence chat bot to improve its recipe, but it reiterated similar flawed ideas.<\/p>\n
The dish was “soulless” and “dreadful”, with the raindrop broth tasting like “thin dishwater”.<\/p>\n
“We served it anyway,” Shewry said.<\/p>\n
“I undertook this experiment because I wanted to prove a fundamental limitation of AI: it cannot have my next idea.<\/p>\n
“It can only mimic what it knows about us, and do so less well.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
An AI-generated recipe in the style of chef Ben Shewry, titled The First Rain on Dry Earth. (Source: Instagram) (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n
He said true creativity does not rely on AI, and is instead honed by resilience, failure and human intelligence.<\/p>\n
“If you want to live a creative life, don’t let technology make a caricature of you,” Shewry said.<\/p>\n
“Hold up a mirror to its cold steely face, serve it in a dish of its own creation, and mock it right back.”<\/p>\n
Shewry recalled his early years in Melbourne when he landed the head chef role at Attica as a 27-year-old struggling to pay rent with an infant son.<\/p>\n
He wasn’t ready for the role, but leaned on his creativity and imagination to create his breakthrough dish \u2013 a crusted lamb shoulder \u2013 when the restaurant was near bankruptcy in 2005.<\/p>\n
“My fingers would be bleeding under the nails as the combination of 100-hour weeks and the scrubbing of dishes without gloves took their toll,” Shewry said.<\/p>\n
“I knew that if I could use my imagination, we might just be able to save the sinking ship.”<\/p>\n
Attica was named Restaurant of the Year by the Good Food Guide in 2009, 2012, 2014, and by Gourmet Traveller in 2015.<\/p>\n
Shewry said Australians must learn to recognise and harness one another’s creativity.<\/p>\n
“Every single one of us has the magical ability, through creativity, to become our best selves. Go out and find it,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A renowned New Zealand chef and restaurateur has urged Australians to take their creativity seriously, warning the rise…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178225,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,85,144,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-178224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-australia","tag-food-drink","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178224\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}