AI-Crafted Culinary Course Creator

This project leverages the concept of scraping restaurant menus (inspiration source 1) to extract dish names, ingredients, and descriptive text. This raw data will then be woven into compelling narratives and course structures, drawing inspiration from the speculative and often thought-provoking themes found in Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg's 'Nightfall' (inspiration source 2). The 'Ex Machina' film (inspiration source 3) provides a framework for thinking about the human-AI interaction and the potential for AI to create sophisticated and engaging content. The online course development domain will be the focus. Instead of generic cooking tutorials, the courses will be highly niche, for example: 'The Gastronomy of Lunar Colonization' (inspired by 'Nightfall's' isolation and resourcefulness), 'Algorithmic Appetizers: Designing Meals with AI Prompts', or 'The Psychology of Flavor: Understanding Taste Through Storytelling'. The AI will be used to:

1. Data Acquisition & Transformation: Scrape menus, categorize dishes, and identify ingredient pairings.
2. Narrative Generation: Craft engaging stories, historical anecdotes, or speculative scenarios around dishes and cuisines. For instance, a course on ancient grains could be framed through a narrative of survival and resilience, echoing 'Nightfall'.
3. Curriculum Structuring: Design lesson plans, quiz questions, and assignment prompts that integrate the storytelling and culinary information.
4. Visual Content Ideas: Suggest visual elements like plating styles or atmospheric settings for video lessons.

Implementation: This can be implemented by an individual using readily available web scraping libraries (e.g., BeautifulSoup in Python), language models for content generation (e.g., GPT-3/4 via API), and online course platforms (e.g., Teachable, Kajabi, or even simpler options like Gumroad). The niche focus makes it low-cost to start, as it targets specific interests. The unique approach to course creation, combining culinary arts with narrative and AI, offers high earning potential in a crowded online learning market by providing something truly distinct. The 'Ex Machina' influence lies in exploring the AI's role as a creative partner, not just a tool, and potentially even using it to develop a persona for the course instructor or a 'virtual sous chef' element.