5/5 (1)

As a person known for having absolutely terrible cooking skills and inventing disgusting food, I often have no idea what kind of meals I should make with the ingredients (they were bought at random at first) in my refrigerator. That is when I found out there are tools and websites enhanced by GenAI for people like me to avoid ‘kitchen disaster’.

In these websites, users can provide a concise sentence with information including the number of people the user is cooking for and what kind of ingredients the user has. After analyzing the input information, these AI tools will provide you with a result with ingredients the user will use and detailed procedures. If the user is not satisfied with the recipe generated, they can also modify the input request or give new additional information.

Graph 1 – The information I put in the website (Dishgen.com, n.d.)

Graph 2 – The recipe and procedures generated by the website (Dishgen.com, n.d.)

Graph 3 – How to input new information to modify the request (Dishgen.com, n.d.)

However, in my opinion, these GenAI websites still have some places for improvement. I will take the website called Dishgen as an example. The website can strengthen its focus on fitness enthusiasts and users with diseases, which is one of the ways to help them increase their interest in opening membership services. Fitness enthusiasts may have special needs for protein and carbon water intake, and even glycemic index. The website can help them achieve their goals by providing accurate nutritional data. People with disease may have to strictly control the intake of certain substances. For example, people with gout cannot eat high-purine foods. The website can also help them avoid foods that will aggravate their condition through customized recipes. In addition, Dishgen provides functions of generating AI photos of food and creating AI-based recipes for the premium membership targetting restaurant owners. However, I have doubts about these two functions and whether the pictures generated by the website based on GenAI technology can help restaurant owners attract customers. Current academic research shows that customers do not always have a positive attitude towards the pictures used by restaurants, and sometimes inappropriate food pictures can have a negative effect (Hou et al., 2017). For me personally, if I see a restaurant using AI-generated food pictures, I will have a negative preconception of the taste of the food.

In conclusion, I believe GenAI tools for recipe-generating websites like Dishgen are truly innovative but still need improvement somehow. Improving the accuracy of nutritional data and carefully providing images of food generated by AI could better suit user needs and increase engagement.

References:

Advanced AI Recipe Generator | DishGen. (n.d.). https://www.dishgen.com/create

Hou, Y., Yang, W., & Sun, Y. (2017). Do pictures help? The effects of pictures and food names on menu evaluations. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 60, 94-103.

5/5 (1)

According to WHO (2022), in 2019, there were approximately one billion people suffer from mental health disorders, and this phenomenon has exacerbated since COVID-19. People are in urgent need of sufficient and effective mental health support. Correspondingly, there were many existing traditional treatments, and doctors and scientists are working on integrating AI, AR and VR technologies into mental health therapy and daily support.

Improvement made with AI: timely intervention and accurate diagnosis

On average, 71% of patients with psychosis do not receive mental health treatment (WHO, 2022). So, what can AI do to help with this? In this field, AI is not only limited to unusual pattern identification now, it is advancing by innovative algorithms, potential risk assessments and designing affordable personalized therapy and treatment.

Firstly, the innovation of algorithms includes training with massive data sets, such as medical records, brain scanning and detecting dangerous signals on social media. In this way, AI learnt how to differentiate subtle signals and detect early stages of depression, anxiety and so on. Secondly, the application combined with AI can analyze the family history, social interactions and medical history to predict their behavioural tendency, future development direction of psychological conditions and potential risk points. Depending on the prediction generated by AI, doctors and psychological counsellors can provide personalized treatment plans and adjust medication and consultation methods promptly to meet an individual’s unique needs and prevent further deterioration of the patient’s psychological condition.

Graph 1 – Introduction page of Mentat Ai website (Mentat Ai, 2024)

Graph 2 – Scale of impact of Wysa (Wysa, 2024)

I will take two applications called Mentat AI and Wysa as examples, which are two AI-driven applications launched, aiming to help people with mental health concerns. Both of them provide 24/7 AI mental support, mental status self-evaluation tools, and some basic scientific techniques such as CBT and mindfulness. Up to now, Wysa has provided support to more than six million people in 95 countries and processed more than 500 million conversations.

AR and VR for better mental status

Much research has proved that AR and VR are useful for many different types of disorders based on cognitive behavioural therapy (van Loenen et al., 2022). There are two examples of how AR and VR can be adapted to therapy or mental disorders. Firstly, VR can provide patients with immersive environments, which allows them to overcome their phobias in a controlled environment. This method is particularly effective for arachnophobia and acrophobia (Bălan et al., 2020). Besides, VR can also used to do mindfulness training, and the users can reduce stress by guided meditations. Secondly, since AR can reflect images and texts into the real world by devices, it can also put therapeutic elements into the physical world, including providing real-time suggestions and socialization mechanisms to people who have social anxiety.  

Graph 3 – PsyTech VR’s appearance and interface (PsyTech VR, 2024)

The products applying these technologies include PsyTech VR and XR Health. PsyTech VR is more focused on mental health, especially exposure therapy, compared to XR Health. PsyTech VR can help individuals tackle a wide range of mental problems, such as phobia, OCD, PTSD, anxiety and so on. While having the ability to design unique therapy plans, it can also be used for group treatment for up to 20 people. As for XR Health, it uses VR to help patients with both physical and mental problems, while doctors and professionals can track the development and health data of the patient based on the analysis provided by XR Health.

In conclusion, with the advancement of AI, AR, and VR in mental health applications, more stakeholders will benefit from it. In addition to the patients themselves, their families, hospitals, communities, schools, public welfare organizations, etc. can also save more time, energy and money while providing better support to patients. However, preventing data leakage and preventing the exposure of patient privacy are still issues that need attention, because once these devices and applications are put into actual use, they will be inseparable from the patient’s life. While improving the effectiveness of these applications, we should also attach great importance to the protection of user data and the maintenance of security systems.

References

Bălan, O., Moise, G., Moldoveanu, A., Leordeanu, M., & Moldoveanu, F. (2020). An investigation of various machine and deep learning techniques applied in automatic fear level detection and acrophobia virtual therapy. Sensors, 20(2), 496.

Mentat Ai. (2024). Mentat Ai. https://www.mentat-ai.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw6JS3BhBAEiwAO9waFzdmB8rxfODubmSyjEo8vrpwZl1QRZgXQMD4CqR97PhFYxjxNNta0BoC51oQAvD_BwE

PsyTech VR | Mental Health and Wellness system for Meta Quest, PICO and HTC. (2024). https://psytechvr.com/

van Loenen, I., Scholten, W., Muntingh, A., Smit, J., & Batelaan, N. (2022). The effectiveness of virtual reality exposure–based cognitive behavioral therapy for severe anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder: Meta-analysis. Journal of medical Internet research, 24(2), e26736.

WHO. (2022b, June 17). WHO highlights urgent need to transform mental health and mental health care. WHO. https://www.who.int/news/item/17-06-2022-who-highlights-urgent-need-to-transform-mental-health-and-mental-health-care

WYSA. (2024). Wysa – Everyday Mental Health. https://www.wysa.com/