Hungry For Hummus? Google Introduces Breakthrough Cloud Technology That Simulates Taste
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Google Israel in a video for April 1 announced an application programming interface that detects what kind of hummus its customers enjoy.
“We’re extremely excited to share with you our latest Google Cloud groundbreaking technology: After enabling our customers to address senses through Speech & Vision API, we are now releasing a subset of Taste APIs started with a dish we all love – Hummus!” reads the introduction to the video on YouTube.
The video, a joke for April Fools’ Day, purports to show how Google researchers came up with the a “taste stick” to determine the variety of hummus that an Israeli would most enjoy based on an analysis of their taste buds, and then pinpoint a local hummus restaurant, one of 20,000 in the country, that serves the appropriate variety of hummus.
One woman who speaks in the video said she did not feel Israeli enough because she had not been able to find a hummus she liked prior to using the Hummus API technology. Another praises the API for helping her find a spicy hummus.
Even long-time Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai gets in on the act, saying that his city is a “culinary and technological center which embraces smart, innovative new ideas. Therefore, it was natural for us to integrate the great hummus API in our city. People find the hummus they need easier, they are happier, the hummus industry is blooming.
Soon there will be an API for pizza in Rome and tacos in Cancun, Mexico!
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO