Apple's HomeView Strips Context and Revenue from Recipe Creators

Apple has introduced HomeView, a smart display designed to act as a hands-free cooking assistant. According to reporting from The Verge, the device uses Siri AI and voice controls to extract ingredient lists and cooking instructions from online recipes, stripping away the surrounding text and personal anecdotes to provide a simplified interface.

While Apple pitches the feature as a way to remove distractions, the Verge reports that this process removes the ads and affiliate links that many recipe writers use to recoup the costs of content creation. Bettina Makalintal, a senior reporter at Eater, told The Verge that tools designed to extract recipes "break apart that unspoken social contract" between developers and their audiences. Makalintal also noted that removing the surrounding text can hinder home cooks who rely on that information for ingredient swaps or troubleshooting.

Although users must first open a recipe via Safari or an iPhone—ensuring at least one ad impression—the Verge notes this is significantly less valuable to creators than the repeated impressions generated when a user remains on a webpage while cooking. Jaya Saxena, a founder-owner of the website Ravenous, told The Verge that most food blogs already provide "jump to recipe" buttons for those who wish to skip the introductory text.

According to Makalintal, the lengthy text often found on recipe pages was a necessity driven by Big Tech, as writers had to pad content to ensure their recipes appeared in Google searches.