Back to list
Back to list

Artificial Taste

While it can’t replace the nutrition we receive from foods, a Japanese company has invented a lickable “taste gadget” that artificially replicates flavors by using LED lighting in electrolyte gels to activate the five different tastes on the human tongue. The gels contain sweet, salty, acidic, bitter, and umami flavors which can be manipulated to achieve the desired taste by suppressing specific flavors according to the voltage in the LED lighting.

Microsoft is also generating artificial tastes by using A.I. to help a distillery come up with unique flavors for its line of whiskies. While the A.I. cannot actually “taste,” it “hallucinates” whiskey flavors through algorithmic parameters developed by the programmers.