Supermarket app recommends ‘poison sandwiches’

And other stories from the stranger side of life

Two slices of bread
(Image credit: Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

A supermarket’s AI app has recommended that customers create recipes for deadly chlorine gas, “poison bread sandwiches” and mosquito-repellent roast potatoes. The app, created by New Zealand supermarket chain Pak ‘n’ Save, tells customers to enter various ingredients in their homes, and auto-generates a recipe, along “with cheery commentary”, said The Guardian. A spokesperson for the supermarket said a “small minority” has “tried to use the tool inappropriately and not for its intended purpose”.

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  Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.