Buy it, cook it, review it.
Get paid for it?

I ORDER food items online. They arrive and I put them in the cupboard – the shopping cycle complete till next time – or is it?

The Freelance asked Copilot™ in PowerPoint to make an image of Yuma, Sous Chef’s AI Answering assistant, thus: “I’m preparing to create a styled title slide, starting by generating an image for the theme.” I then asked Copilot to make Yuma look like a yuzu fruit just because of the alliteration.

Image © Copilot™ by command of the deputy editor

After ordering items from Sous Chef I received an email on Sunday 31 May at 20:47, asking me to review each item I had purchased; even better, could I video myself talking about what I had bought?

“We hope you’re enjoying your recent Sous Chef order! We’re a small, passionate team -and every review helps others discover new ingredients, cookware and tableware they’ll love too. If you have a minute, we’d be incredibly grateful if you could leave a quick review. Even better - share a photo (or video!) of what you made - we love seeing what our customers create in the kitchen.”

I wrote back: “I am a journalist: what is the word rate for reviewing any product I purchase from Sous Chef? Let me know and I’ll see whether it’s worth my while to review each item…”

On Sunday 31 May at 20:49 Sous Chef autoreplied: “thank you for reaching out! We’ll get back...” But then at 20:52 I got a more friendly reply from Yuma, which is Sous Chef’s “AI assistant”.

“Hello Pennie,

“Many thanks for getting in touch. I’ve forwarded your message onto our marketing and PR team. If it’s something they are interested in, they’ll get back in touch.

“Best wishes, AI Chef

“This message was generated by Yuma, your friendly AI assistant...”

The Freelance is wondering: if Yuma were to enter into an email contract engaging a freelance journalist to review products for a fee and not for free - would this contract have to be honoured?

© Pennie Quinton

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