From Artificial to Affective Intelligence: Teaching Technology to Taste Emotions

AI is transforming food innovation. It can optimize ingredients, formulations, sensory profiles and consumer data at extraordinary speed. But one critical question remains: can it understand how a product should make someone feel—and use that understanding to help create it?

At IFT FIRST 2026, Dr. Constantinos Pantidos, Founder of BRAND AVIATORS®, and Nick Ferraro of Ingredion explored this next frontier: moving from Artificial Intelligence to Affective Intelligence.

The challenge is not simply recognizing or measuring emotion. It is making emotion operational. If a product should feel reassuring, indulgent, energizing or playful, how should that intention influence the concept and positioning—and ultimately the ingredients, formulation, flavor, texture and complete sensory experience?

Drawing on biology and affective neuroscience, THE WHEEL OF MOTIVES® provides a system for making that translation possible. It maps the fundamental human motives behind choice so that emotional understanding can first inform strategy, positioning and concepts, and then guide the tangible characteristics through which people actually experience them.

The development of SOLACE™, a probiotic yogurt concept built around the fundamental human motive to FEEL SAFE, demonstrated this process in practice. FEEL SAFE was not simply an emotional story added to a finished product. It became the organizing principle behind the concept and experience—and was then translated into specific sensory and formulation principles, from smoothness and creaminess to gentle coating, soft meltaway and familiar cues.

In this way, an intangible human motive travelled all the way from emotional strategy to physical formulation.

This represents a fundamental reversal of the conventional innovation process. Instead of creating a product first and then asking consumers how it makes them feel, start with the human motive, turn it into a strategic and experiential direction, and then design the product to deliver it.

AI adds a powerful new dimension to this process. Once emotional meaning has been structured, technology can help explore and optimize the concepts, formulations and sensory combinations capable of bringing that meaning to life. Artificial Intelligence gains an emotional compass for what it creates.

The presentation therefore points toward a new model of food innovation—one in which emotion is no longer something marketers talk about or researchers measure at the end of the process. It becomes something companies can systematically operationalize and design into strategy, concepts, formulations and experiences from the beginning.

A glimpse into a future where technology doesn't just optimize food.

It learns to design for human emotion.

Read selected highlights from the presentation here: