Food Delivery App Apologizes for AI-Generated Menu Photos Showing Bacon Floating in Soda

Food delivery app Just Eat has apologized over several inaccurate AI-generated photos on menus, including a nauseating picture of bacon and eggs floating in a soda.

Just Eat, which operates in the U.K., was testing out AI-generated images on menus as part of a trial across the food delivery app. The AI-generated images were being used by restaurants that hadn’t taken their own real photographs of food. Just Eat would tag each photo on the menu as “AI-generated” if this tool had been used to create the image.

According to The Independent, Just Eat has paused the trial following customer complaints about bizarre and inaccurate AI-generated menu images.

One restaurant in Northern Ireland that sells soda bread, a popular type of bread in the region, was given images that appeared to show sausages, bacon and fried eggs floating in pints of fizzy drinks instead of the Irish breakfast sandwiches it actually serves.

Salt and pepper chips, a popular dish at Chinese takeout restaurants in the U,K,, typically made with fried onions, chili peppers, and bell peppers, were depicted by AI as plain fries covered in excessive amounts of salt and pepper on the Just Eat app.

Meanwhile at another cafe, an image of cheddar cheese listed on the vegetarian menu instead showed an orange, fondue-like sauce.

In a statement to The Independent, Just East claims it helps many small restaurants get good photos of their food, including by paying for professional local photographers to take the pictures.

“We want partners on our platform to show photos that accurately reflect their dishes so that our customers can be confident in what they are ordering and happy when their food arrives,” a Just Eat spokesperson says. “We work with tens of thousands of small restaurants on their food imagery, including funding professional local photographers.

Just Eat also apologized for the inaccurate images. The company says it has removed the AI-generated images in question and has suspended the trial.

“We’ve been trialling AI-enhanced images and as with any new technology, it isn’t always quite right the first time,” the food delivery app says. We’re sorry for any inaccurate images that have been posted. We’re in the process of removing them and have paused rolling this out while we further develop the tool to ensure it best serves our partners and customers.”

The controversy surrounding Just Eat comes months after a new San Francisco restaurant was defaced by disgruntled locals when they put up a large board full of AI-generated food photos in the window.