Our AI-powered Dinner in 2050 was a first-of-its-kind interactive storytelling experience that made climate change real on a plate for guests at COP28, Dubai. It was designed to be a transformative way to shift deeply ingrained habits by focusing on strengthening food security in a region already at the frontlines of climate change. Our custom immersive AI model tailored favourite meals to the food substitutions needed in that region in order to achieve net zero in 2050. Tellart conceptualised, designed and produced an immersive installation that provokes fresh views of the food we eat, and how this contributes to food security and sustainable living in an intimate, playful setting.

Lamb was swapped for grasshoppers, broccoli for algae, and beef for lab-grown meat. Standing around a table made of sustainable palm wood, guests speak their favourite meal into a microphone. Tellart’s custom AI model identifies the top ingredients in their meal, selects which ingredients have the highest carbon footprint, chooses sustainable alternatives (based on U.N. data), then generates a future version of this dish with an informative description. Guests learn how their meal can impact water and energy use, carbon emissions and biodiversity, and improve their nutrition.

Dinner was set in a vessel within the UAE House of Sustainability at COP28, a quiet, reflective space that offered focus within the busy context of the Conference. The materials of the table and the tabletop experience were designed to be as sustainable and local as possible and representative of Emirati culture. We designed the space with a contemporary Emirati feel which worked to balance the experience that required a minimalist surface for projection, and not having much visual clutter on the table to encourage peoples' gaze to go to the plate. The mats on the table are called "Khous" or "Al Khous", one of the oldest traditional art professions in the UAE, made by local craftswomen out of local dried palm leaves. Our ceramics were made by a local ceramics studio, and the shapes were art directed by a local UAE crafts organisation called Irthi Contemporary Crafts Council. These special objects were placed on a table made of local date palm wood and dressed with acacia flowers native to the Emirates.

COP28 Dubai welcomed guests from around the world including world leaders, delegates and the public. Over the two weeks the conference ran, 18,000 meals were generated by guests.

While conversations about the future often feel far-removed from the present day, this interactive, joyful dining experience uses machine learning to showcase how seemingly small, individual choices can have a ripple effect on our collective future, while raising questions around what ingredients will be available in thirty years' time if we don't change the way we consume and waste food.

The guest experience of the UAE House of Sustainability at COP28 was created by the most senior leadership of the UAE and Tellart.