A selection of five pastries signifying the different stages of love has been curated in Japan, with their flavors devised with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
Kimuraya Sohonten bakery and technology firm NEC Corp. collaborated to make the "RenAI" bread, a pun on the word for love in Japanese and AI, in a bid to produce a food that "makes you fall in love when you eat it."
Among the creations are "hajimete no date," meaning first date, and "namida no shitsuren," or tearful heartbreak.
The pastries cost 200 yen ($1.4) a piece and are available in grocery stores in the Kanto region centering Tokyo and online.
The companies utilized an AI tool to analyze 15 hours of conversations between high schoolers starring in a popular program on the streaming service Abema called "Kyo suki ni narimashita" (I fell in love with you today) to visualize romantic emotions.
Additionally, AI was utilized to comb through around 35,000 Japanese song lyrics featuring fruits and sweets to better grasp what foods may elicit certain emotions, thereby helping create pastries fit for different scenarios.
Among the pieces of bread that went on sale on Feb. 1 is the honey-flavored "musubareru ryoomoi," or mutual love, which was flavored with honey to signify the "feeling of always wanting to be together."
The company plans to start selling on March 1 "yakimochi," or envy, with truffle and raisins to symbolize the feeling of constant anxiety. "Unmei no deai," or fateful encounter, will go on sale on April 1 with sweet apples to connote the "feeling of falling in love."
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