Oops! Even AI Doesn’t Know How to Cut a Romanesco
Even AI gets it wrong—like when it showed me how to cut a romanesco with a hilariously flawed diagram. Always fact-check your bots!
In yesterday’s blog, I wrote about how much I rely on AI in my daily life—but let’s be honest: AI makes some wild mistakes too.
For example, I was interested in entering an illustration contest and asked ChatGPT to compile a list of open calls for artists. It returned five or so competitions, but more than half had either been discontinued years ago or weren’t even for illustrators—one was for photographers! In the end, I lost interest in applying altogether.
But the most surprising mistake happened when I bought a romanesco—a fractal vegetable somewhere between broccoli and cauliflower—and asked ChatGPT how to cut it. It even offered illustrations to guide me.
That’s where the chaos began.
The diagram was full of mistakes! Step numbers were duplicated, one of the illustrations was repeated, and the cutting sequence made no sense. One drawing showed the romanesco chopped into florets, then suddenly it was halved vertically, then halved top to bottom again... none of it added up!
Clearly, we’re still far from being able to throw our hands up and leave everything to ChatGPT. Especially when it comes to web-sourced information, this was a good reminder that it's up to us to fact-check the AI’s answers.