How Moscow's AI-inspired restaurant guide ‘Ultima Guide’ works
Yandex recently released the ‘Ultima Guide’, a restaurant guide for the Russian capital, which was created with the help of AI technologies. Its preparation involved not only people, but also a neural network, which studied 28,500 points on the gastronomic map of Moscow.
When compiling the guide, the neural network took into account more than 100 parameters. For example, the establishment must have been operating for at least three months and not part of a chain.
Out of thousands of cafes and restaurants, the network compiled a long-list of 312 finalists, evaluating them by reviews, calls for taxis, orders and ratings. The best were chosen by voting - 21,000 users of the company's services and more than 100 experts participated in the voting. This is how a list of 51 restaurants appeared.
The final version includes a variety of establishments. It includes a luxurious caviar bar in the city center, the project of Peruvian chef Virgilio Martinez, ‘Cafe Pushkin’, one of the most famous Moscow restaurants of Russian cuisine and even the immersive ‘Krasota’ gastro-theater.
"American representatives at negotiations with the Russian side in Saudi Arabia were surprised by the information that many restaurants are opening in Russia," said Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, on Channel One.
