TokyoCNN
What is the flavor of love? The perception of this taste may vary depending on the individual you inquire.
Some individuals may liken it to the bittersweetness of dark chocolate, while others may characterize it as sumptuously indulgent, akin to a sweet cupcake.
In Japan, a bakery chain has embarked on a quest to unravel this enigma using technology.
Kimuraya, Japan’s oldest bakery, has collaborated with NEC Corp, a Japanese electronics company, to introduce what they dub as “Ren AI Pan” or “AI Romance Bread.”
The collaboration between NEC and Kimuraya aims to encapsulate the essence of the myriad emotions intertwined with love through a new line of bread available in five distinct flavors.
The intriguing aspect emerges as NEC employed its AI technology to scrutinize dialogues from a television reality dating program and songs containing allusions to fruits and confections in their lyrics.
By delving into this analysis, they pinpointed five fundamental sentiments associated with romance: initial encounter, first date, envy, heartache, and shared affection. Subsequently, the bakery ingeniously translated these emotions into a range of fluffy steamed bread variations.
Eager to sample this innovative creation? The bread was launched for sale starting February 1 at supermarkets across Japan’s Kanto region and on Kimuraya Bakery’s online platform.
Exploring the Flavorful Journey of Love
The genesis of this unconventional collaboration stemmed from a shared predicament faced by both brands: the quest to resonate with younger demographics in Japan.
Upon conducting market research, Kimuraya unearthed a prevailing disinterest among the youth in pursuing romantic entanglements. Despite this prevailing trend, a profound yearning persisted among the younger populace to experience dates, love, and companionship.
Identifying this void, the company conceptualized AI Love Bread, designed to replicate the romantic essence, thereby eliciting sensations of love upon consumption—essentially kindling these emotions within their personal lives.
NEC reveals the deployment of two AI technologies for this initiative: “NEC Enhanced Speech” for speech-to-text conversion and “NEC Data Enrichment” for deriving emotional scores from textual data.
Leveraging this data, AI meticulously selected ingredients symbolizing the spectrum of love-related emotions.
To gather relevant material, a “conversation analysis” was conducted using 15 hours of footage extracted from a Japanese reality dating show titled “Today I Fell In Love.”
Subsequently, AI transcribed the dialogues into text, categorizing each into one of five classifications: serendipitous encounter, a romantic rendezvous, envy, heartbreak, or mutual love.
Further, AI extracted lyrics from approximately 35,000 love and food-related songs from a Japanese database. Emotional scores were then assigned to these conversations and lyrics to craft a visual representation correlating different stages of love with specific foods and flavors.
The “Fateful Encounter” bread embodies the ethereal sweetness of cotton candy, symbolizing the initial delicate stirrings of affection. “Jealousy” is characterized by the fusion of purple sweet potatoes, truffle oil, and raisins.
Completing the assortment, “First Date” tantalizes with citrus notes of lime and orange peel, while “Mutual Love” harmonizes a blend of sweet honey, succulent peach, and exotic dragon fruit.
Although these bread concepts were conceived through technology, human intervention was still imperative.
“While AI was responsible for ingredient selection, our task was to transform them into bread,” remarked Yuki Kitazawa, a developer at Kimuraya Bakery. “We meticulously considered the color palette to visually convey romantic emotions, aiming for a vibrant and visually appealing Love Bread.”
