Food Delivery Platform Just Eat Apologises After AI Creates Bizarre Food Images For Restaurant Menus

Artificial intelligence (AI) can help companies complete tasks faster, but it does not always get things right. Online food delivery platform Just Eat has apologised after its AI-generated food pictures attracted ridicule online for showing unusual and incorrect versions of dishes offered by restaurants, reported BBC.

The platform had been testing AI technology to create pictures for food items that did not yet have images on its menus. However, some of the results were far from what the restaurants actually served, leading to several bizarre food combinations.

One of the strangest examples came from a cafe in Belfast, where a bacon and egg soda bread dish was shown as a glass of fizzy cola with cooked bacon and an egg floating inside it. The mistake appeared to stem from the AI confusing the word "soda" with "soda bread".

Speaking to the BBC, a Just Eat spokesperson said the company is removing the incorrect images and would pause generating new ones until the technology was further developed.

The spokesperson explained that Just Eat works with tens of thousands of small restaurants to provide food images, including by funding professional local photographers. 

The company had been testing AI-enhanced pictures but acknowledged that new technology does not always produce the correct results on the first attempt.

The incident highlights the challenges companies can face when using AI to make their work faster or simpler. In particular, the mistakes show how AI can struggle to understand the specific meaning of words when they are used in different contexts.