Taste.com.au has embraced AI with a new virtual recipe assistant named TasteBud within the Taste app. TasteBud allows users to find recipes based on available ingredients and specific dietary preferences, utilising the intellectual property of the Taste brand and its collection of 50,000 triple-tested recipes.

This marks News Corp Australia’s first consumer-facing AI feature. Taste is a leading Australian leading food media brand with a monthly audience of 4.5 million, according to Ipsos.

“Our digital food products are focused on enhancing the user experience and this is a great example of how we’re optimising our content and addressing the consumer need for efficiency to deliver them greater value,"Pippa Leary, Managing Director and Publisher Free News and Lifestyle, said. “It also reinforces News' commitment to being at the forefront of innovation. TasteBud leads the way for future AI developments, supporting our growth and market-first offerings for consumers and clients.”

TasteBud offers Taste app subscribers an interactive way to explore Taste’s recipes through a custom-built conversational agent. The chat experience allows for follow-up queries, improving search results for a more personalised experience. TasteBud boasts an accuracy rate of 99 per cent, with 'chicken' being the most common query.

Kerrie McCallum, Head of Food, Travel and Health, said, “TasteBud simplifies and personalises the recipe search process. It helps the Taste audience solve problems, finding recipes that match their cooking ideas, ingredients, and preferences to our world-leading and extensive recipe database. TasteBud goes beyond basic search functionality to deliver highly relevant suggestions, especially when contextual prompts such as ‘limited time’ are added. We are in the early phases of this exciting journey and TasteBud already has an impressive accuracy rate of 99 per cent, with ‘chicken’ being the most common query.”

Taste.com.au has an audience who consume 68 million page views a month and generate 99 million data points every day.