Just Eat tried to make sparse restaurant menus look more complete with AI-generated food pictures, but it became an online punchline. Among the oddest examples users flagged was a Northern Ireland soda bread item shown as bacon, sausages, and eggs floating in pint glasses of cola.
Here's what to know
According to The Independent, the delivery app generated dish photos for restaurants that didn't supply their own food images, and the app marked those visuals as "AI-generated."
The idea was to fill visual gaps for smaller businesses, but the trial quickly produced obvious errors.
Some synthetic pictures were serviceable, with the system producing recognizable versions of staples like full English breakfasts and generic curries. Others, however, looked far less believable.
For example, a cafe's vegetarian cheddar cheese selection appeared as an orange sauce resembling fondue. On other menus, salt-and-pepper chips — which, as the source report described, usually come with fried onions, chili, and peppers — were reduced to plain-looking potato snacks.
The clearest failure came from a Northern Ireland restaurant selling soda breads. Instead of showing the breakfast sandwiches customers would expect, the tool created images that looked like meat and eggs suspended in fizzy drinks.
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More background
Menu photos can heavily influence what people order, especially on delivery apps where customers cannot inspect a dish before buying it.
When a platform-generated image misses the mark, it can make a restaurant look sloppy even if the business didn't create the picture.
The reaction reached social media. After sharing an AI-created image of salt and pepper chips on X, a user said, "I swear if my salt and pepper chips come like this, I'm going to cause murder," according to The Independent.
People found the images funny, but they also raised legitimate doubts about whether the app could be trusted to represent meals accurately.
Tools like image generators can save businesses time and may eventually support useful work such as optimizing clean energy systems and managing power demand on the grid. But AI also comes with trade-offs, including heavy electricity and water use from data centers, along with risks tied to misuse, security issues, and unintended costs that can ripple out to consumers.
What's being done?
Just Eat said it had halted the trial of AI-generated menu images. It also said it is taking inaccurate pictures down from the platform while the company works to improve the system.
A Just Eat spokesperson said, per The Independent, "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."
Just Eat also said it works with "tens of thousands of small restaurants" on food imagery and helps fund professional local photographers.
Just Eat added, "We've been trialling AI-enhanced images and as with any new technology, it isn't always quite right the first time. 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."
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