The Verge has published a hands-on review of NYT Cooking's AI assistant, and the verdict splits cleanly down the middle: a real help for improvised weeknight dinners, a liability when baking precision matters.

The reviewer describes a familiar ritual — standing in front of the fridge around 7PM, hunting for a dinner idea that will not prompt a "Chicken again?" complaint — and credits the assistant with rescuing exactly that kind of weeknight chicken scramble. Where it stumbled was dessert: the AI nearly ruined a cake, a reminder that baking's tight tolerances punish the kind of loose substitutions and approximations that conversational AI tends to offer confidently.

The split result mirrors a broader pattern in AI cooking tools. Savory cooking forgives improvisation, so an assistant that riffs on what is in the fridge adds genuine value. Baking is chemistry, and chemistry does not negotiate. For NYT Cooking, which has been layering AI features onto one of the most trusted recipe libraries online, the review suggests the assistant works best as a brainstorming partner — and worst as an authority.