Chef.AI

Chef.AI is an iPhone and iPad app that uses AI to create recipes from photos of ingredients and to estimate the nutrition in photographed meals. Made by developer Nana Annor Asante, it works as a kitchen companion for home cooks who want to use what is already in the fridge, plan dinners, follow recipes hands-free and track calories and macros, without needing a subscription, an account or ads.

A user photographs one or more ingredients, and Chef.AI identifies them; the list can be reviewed and corrected before the user chooses from three personalized recipe ideas. Servings, cooking time, cuisine, pantry preferences, dietary needs, allergies, dislikes and available appliances can all be set, and recipes can be generated in the user's preferred language. Each finished recipe comes with ingredients, clear instructions, cooking times and nutrition estimates.

The Meal Recorder estimates the nutritional breakdown of a photographed meal, with an adjustable portion size, and saves it to a meal history covering calories, protein, carbohydrates, fat and vitamins. Cook Mode keeps the screen awake, runs timers and reads instructions aloud. Magic Edit takes plain-language requests to change a recipe, and one ingredient-photo session can become a 3-, 5- or 7-day dinner plan. Generated recipes are saved to a searchable library with shopping lists.

Chef.AI is free to download with in-app purchases, including 15 recipes for $0.99 and passes from a $4.99 daily pass to a $74.99 yearly pass. It runs on iOS 17.0 and iPadOS 17.0 or later, on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 14.0 or later, and on visionOS 1.0 or later. Optional Apple Health links save nutrition data and tailor recipes to calorie and protein targets without sending raw Health records to the AI service.

Use cases

• Turning the ingredients already in the fridge into a recipe
• Tracking calories and macros by photographing meals
• Planning several days of dinners from one set of ingredient photos
• Cooking hands-free with instructions read aloud
• Adapting recipes to allergies, dislikes, dietary needs and available appliances
• Choosing recipes that fit the remaining daily calorie and protein targets