Just Eat apologises for hilarious AI-generated food pictures

Just Eat has been forced to apologise after hungry shoppers unearthed AI-generated snaps of food items on the platform.

The delivery service had been testing out tech that it hoped would generate images of food that weren’t pictured on its platform yet.

However, this had some pretty bizarre results.

Rather than accurately depict the food, the rogue AI tool came up with a number of crazy-looking dishes.

These included ‘jalapeño cheese’ – a block of cheese with entire slices of jalapeño in it; a ‘ham and cheese wrap’ which contained cubes of raw ham and cheese in an untoasted tortilla; and ‘bacon and egg’ which, inexplicably, came in a glass of beer.

Images of the unusual eats have circulated on social media, causing uproar.

Of a picture of a literal jacket potato – a jacket covered in images of potatoes – one Instagram user wrote: ‘That potato jacket looks absolutely delicious.’

Another added: ‘I don’t understand. Who wants AI images of a restaurant’s food even if they looked closer to what the dish should be?

‘I want to see what the dish actually looks like as it helps me decide who to order from or what to order; plus these “perfect” AI versions just lead to disappointment if that’s what you think your meal will look like.’

But perfect these images are not. A third user wrote: ‘A place local to me has a burger labelled “just cheese” and the pic is a slice of cheese on a plate.’

‘This is hilarious,’ someone else chimed in. ‘Our local chippy had pictures of scallops (the crustacean variety) for scallops (the sliced potato variety). I thought that can’t be right for a chippy in the scrag end of Liverpool.’

All AI-generated images on the delivery app have a label marking them out.

A Just Eat spokesperson said the company was ‘in the process of removing’ the images and would stop creating more until they had developed their AI system sufficiently.

They said: ‘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.

‘We work with tens of thousands of small restaurants on their food imagery, including funding professional local photographers.

‘We’ve been trialling AI-enhanced images, which are clearly labelled as such, and as with any new technology, it isn’t always quite right the first time.

‘We’re in the process of removing any inaccurate images that have been posted, and have paused rolling this out while we further develop the tool to ensure it best serves our partners and customers.

‘The number of inaccurate images is incredibly small, though we are aware of many examples now circulating on social media which were not developed by our tool.’

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