Just Eat Apologises After AI Menu Images Turned Soda Bread Into a Glass of Cola
Just Eat has apologised after being ridiculed online for a run of mistakes in AI-generated pictures for some of its restaurants' food items. The delivery platform had been testing the technology to showcase dishes that had no images yet, and not all of it went as planned.
The AI produced some genuinely bizarre concoctions, among them bacon and eggs floating in a glass of cola — a confusion between soda and soda bread — and chips poking out of muffins. A spokesperson told the BBC the company had been trialling AI-enhanced images and that, as with any new technology, it isn't always quite right the first time.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The most useful thing said about this is that companies still hit trouble when they use AI to speed up or simplify work, especially when the system has to interpret words in a specific context — and a takeaway menu is almost nothing but words in a very specific context.
Context is only half of it. On a delivery app the photo is information, which is why one commenter asked why customers would want AI images of a restaurant's food at all, even if those images were closer to the real thing.
The labelling softens that somewhat: AI-generated pictures on the app are marked as such. Which means a cheese roll that arrives as slabs of cheese rolled into a sushi roll is at least a mistake you were warned might happen.