Just Eat's AI apocalypse raises a glaring question

Lots of gastronomy businesses have gone all in on unappetising AI food imagery, but surely even the most enthusiastic slop purveyor would baulk at the Just Eat AI fail. The food delivery app's implementation of very literal text-to-image generation saw restaurants' menus filled with grotesque fantasy creations.

Just Eat has apologised and said it was removing the images. But what was it thinking?

As reported by the BBC, images spotted on the Just Eat app in the UK include a bacon and egg soda bread cocktail at a Northern Ireland cafe and a 'jacket potato' represented by an actual jacket with pictures of baked potatoes on it.

Other gems included a plain garlic bread shaped like a plane because of a typo, a bowl of tiger cubs (tiger prawns, apparently), a literal toad in the hole and a 'lighter' breakfast depicted as a cigarette lighter.

Just Eat is really late to this party. Its rival Uber Eats went through this embarrassment almost three years ago. The technology has advanced massively since then, but somehow Just Eat managed to roll out an even worse implementation. On social media, people have been asking how a $4bn company managed to mess up so badly and how it could roll out such a risky feature without properly testing it.

But there's also an even more obvious question: why? Even if the AI 'worked' as intended and generated an image of the perfect Platonic ideal of each dish, using fake product photography for food seems like a guaranteed way to cause disappointment and complaints from customers.

Users have already been sharing screenshots on social media, showing 'AI vs reality' comparisons, with some complaining that Just Eat has refused to issue refunds despite the actual product ordered not even remotely resembling the AI hallucination.

That's not the fault of the business making the food when the false impression was created by an AI image foisted on it by the app. They join the growing list of businesses suffering because of automatic AI-generated images pushed on their products on platforms as varied as Amazon and Reddit.

Joe is a regular freelance journalist and editor at Creative Bloq. He writes news, features and buying guides and keeps track of the best equipment and software for creatives, from video editing programs to monitors and accessories. A veteran news writer and photographer, he now works as a project manager at the London and Buenos Aires-based design, production and branding agency Hermana Creatives. There he manages a team of designers, photographers and video editors who specialise in producing visual content and design assets for the hospitality sector. He also dances Argentine tango.