Dodo Pizza, a fast-growing global chain that started in Syktyvkar, Russia, in 2011, turned to ChatGPT to create what it calls the world’s largest pizzeria menu. Now, as the BBC reports, at least one of the recipes has proven to be a smash hit with customers.

Earlier this year, Dodo Pizza announced that its AI-powered “flavor generator” took more than 35 ingredients and developed 30 million-plus pizza-topping combos for customers. The feature is currently offered exclusively to the brand’s customers in Dubai.

If that sounds like little more than a PR stunt, Spartak Arutyunyan, CEO of Dodo Pizza Dubai, sees it differently. “We asked ChatGPT to create a recipe [that would be] the best pizza for Dubai,” Arutyunyan told the BBC. “And it did create a recipe. We launched it, it was actually a huge hit, and it’s still on the menu.”

In fact, Dubai attracts millions of immigrants from across the world. “There’s so many cultures here: Indians, Pakistanis, Filipinos, Arab people, European guys,” Arutyunyah said. With that in mind, he wanted to develop a pizza recipe that would appeal to that broad, multicultural swath of pizza lovers.

ChatGPT came back with a recipe featuring Arab shawarma chicken, Indian grilled paneer cheese, Middle Eastern Za’atar herbs, and tahini sauce.  “As a chef, I wouldn’t mix these ingredients, ever, on a pizza, but still, the mix of flavors was surprisingly good,” Arutyunyan said.

Dodo Pizza collaborated with ChatGPT over a period of six months to generate a multitude of topping combinations and international flavors. The team set parameters to weed out ingredients that shouldn’t be mixed together and tested every combo before approving them as ordering options.

Dodo’s flavor generator went live in Dubai in February 2024. Ingredient possibilities include popcorn, duck, guacamole, fruit loops, falafel and pumpkin seeds. Users can specify their preferences, including ingredients they don’t want, and the AI tool takes about five seconds to propose a unique combination of toppings to try, including a name and description for each pizza.

Dodo Pizza currently has 1,127 company-owned and franchised units in 22 countries: United Arab Emirates, Russia, Armenia, Cyprus, Romania, Turkey, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Vietnam, Belarus, Nigeria, Slovenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Georgia, Serbia, Germany, Poland, Estonia and Lithuania. It reported $985 million in sales in 2023, an increase of 28% from the previous year.