AI-powered Pizza? Yes. Ooni (the makers of my favorite outdoor pizza oven) has announced an AI-powered indoor version called the Volt 2. This is actually more exciting than the AI-powered GE Profile Smart Indoor Smoker I got after seeing it at CES.
Anyone who has attempted serious pizza making indoors knows the drill: smoke alarms screaming, windows thrown open in January, and that inevitable moment when half your crust chars while the other half stays pale. Ooni says the Volt 2 addresses these pain points with an integrated steam and smoke filter (finally!), as well as heating elements that span the entire pizza stone for consistent temperature distribution.
Available October 1, the Volt 2 is a $699 indoor electric pizza oven featuring “Pizza Intelligence,” a patent-pending adaptive heating system that uses real-time sensor data to dynamically balance heat between top and bottom heating elements (which should eliminate cold spots and temperature fluctuations). I’m not sure that this is actually AI, but I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt. The oven is spec’d to reach 850°F in 20 minutes and cook a 13-inch Neapolitan pizza in 90 seconds.
As you can tell from my boyish physique, I love pizza! I especially love making pizza for family gatherings. The Volt 2 has me excited about the potential to take the party indoors, and – as you can imagine — I’m amused by the concept of an AI-Pizza-CoPilot. Will I still find it funny when I get my first humanoid robot that, among the thousand other things it can do, makes pizza better than I do? That’s the race to the end state for pizza.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it. This work was created with the assistance of various generative AI models.