Just Eat apologises for AI food mistakes after social media ridicule
BBC News
Just Eat says sorry after AI made bacon-and-egg soda and chip muffins for menu photos. The bot mixed up food terms, and the bad images became the story.
Based on reporting by BBC News — read the original for the full story.
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Just Eat has apologised after its AI-made food pictures were mocked online for turning ordinary menu items into odd little disasters. The delivery app had been testing the technology to fill in missing photos for restaurants, but some of the results were wildly off: bacon and eggs in a glass of cola, chips stuffed into muffins, even a cheese roll turned into something like sushi.
A Just Eat spokesperson said the company was removing the wrong images and would pause making new ones until the system is improved. The company said it works with tens of thousands of small restaurants on food imagery, and that it also funds professional local photographers. AI-enhanced images were only a trial, the spokesperson said, and new technology does not always get things right first time.
The embarrassment shows a very ordinary problem with AI, which is that words are not always as obvious to software as they are to people. Soda bread became soda, plain became plane, and a chip muffin was apparently enough to convince the model that potatoes should be baked into bread. On menus, that kind of error does not look clever. It looks hungry and confused.
Some of the images were still visible on menus when the BBC checked, despite carrying a label saying they were AI-generated. The mistakes have been getting attention on social media, including the UK subreddit for Just Eat and an Instagram account posting the more absurd examples. Some people found them funny. Others just saw a reason to order less.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is exactly the sort of mess AI makes when companies use it to save a bit of time and skip the boring human step. Food photos are supposed to help people decide what to buy, not play a prank on them with fizzy egg soup. The industry keeps insisting these tools are just “trialled”, which is often corporate code for “we shipped it and hoped nobody noticed.”
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