WAITER, THERE’S AN EGG IN MY COKE! UK food delivery app Just Eat has been testing AI to make pictures for menu items that didn’t have photos yet, the BBC reported. It went about as well as you’d think.
A Belfast cafe’s bacon and egg soda bread showed up as a glass of fizzy drink with a cooked egg and bacon floating in it. Other dishes came out as chips poking out of muffins. A “cheese roll” became slabs of cheese rolled up like sushi. And thanks to a misspelling, one garlic bread came out shaped like a plane, presumably because someone meant “plain.”
Users on the Just Eat UK subreddit have spent days posting the best of the worst. The AI pictures carry a label saying so, and the BBC spotted many of the stranger ones still on menus.
A Just Eat spokesperson said the company is “in the process of removing” the bad images and will stop making more until the AI is further developed. “We’ve been trialling AI-enhanced images, and as with any new technology, it isn’t always quite right the first time,” they said, adding that it works with tens of thousands of small restaurants on photos, including funding professional local photographers.
One social media user summed it up: “Well, that lot just helped my diet.” Another made the real point: they want to see what the food actually looks like, because perfect AI versions “just lead to disappointment.”
Featured image: AI-generated editorial illustration by Bugle Blast.
Sources: BBC News
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