I'm not really an AI in everything person, but weirdly: I'm an avid cook. I own well over a hundred cookbooks. I've been cooking for literally decades. Putting aside humility, I'm pretty comfortable just opening the fridge and making something on demand and it usually ends up pretty good and interesting. (usually. ;-)

And I find meal planning to be a drag. I don't like it. But it's really helpful in saving time over the week. I find myself using gemini once in a while to get ideas to kick me out of a boring routine or when I'm feeling unmotivated, and it's pretty helpful. Probably most helpful because it gets the ball rolling -- dealing with the "blank page" problem is hard in all sorts of domains, including meal planning. I don't actually like the idea of the OP's app -- I like to have more control and iterate a fair bit -- but I can appreciate the general area.

It's surprising how easy it is to stare at an entire bookshelf of cookbooks and not feel inspired. Ask me how I know.

I'm content to just keep healthy ingredients on hand and improvise, but I get that some people could want something with more structure.

How many people own a cookbook they haven't opened in a year? I think the value proposition is the same as Pandora: send me something I'll like that I wasn't expecting.

AI slop enjoyers want to delegate every single aspects of their lives to AI. For them cooking is an insult to their intellect, writing a personal message to someone is a waste of time, &c.

Why bother with cookbooks when you can cook the statistical average of spaghetti carbonara ?

Why bother spending 10 minutes of brain power when you can just pay 9.99 a month for a machine to tell you what to do ?

I get the skepticism as I shared similar thoughts on what recipe quality would be like. I'm also quite sensitive to AI slop. My wife, who really is an outstanding cook, was even more skeptical, and she has a _very_ high bar for recipes. To be clear, we don't use it to generate recipes for every meal. She has a collection of go-to favorites and then peppers in 1-2 AI recipes throughout the week, often to explore new things. She also uses it to create "Quick Bite" recipes for when we need something fast with whatever we have on hand, outside of an actual meal plan.

Honestly, I wasn't sure if the AI recipes were going to meet her standards when it comes to food, but so far she's been quite happy overall with the recipe quality. She often will request replacements or customizations, so the first pass suggestions are not always what she's looking for.

I realize it's definitely not for everyone though.