In Northern Ireland, a breakfast soda is a soda bread sandwich, usually stuffed with bacon, sausage and egg. Just Eat's AI did not know that. It drew a pint of cola with sausages, bacon and a fried egg floating in it.
That picture, and plenty like it, has now been taken down. The food delivery company has apologised and paused a trial that used AI to make menu photos for restaurants that had not uploaded their own.
What the trial was for
Menus with pictures sell more food, and many small takeaways do not have the time or money for a photographer. So Just Eat started generating images from the text of each menu item, labelling every one "AI-generated" in the app, according to The Independent and The Journal. The company told The Journal it had been testing the idea for a few months and that every image was checked by a person.
What the AI drew
Customers in the UK and Ireland started sharing the results. Reported examples include:
- a "breakfast soda" shown as meat and eggs in a glass of cola (The Independent, The Grocer)
- scampi shown as sushi, and a battered burger drawn between two battered buns (The Journal)
- a smoked cod listing with "wheat flour" in the description, shown as a fish fillet with loose flour on top (The Journal)
- a "garlic bread plane" shown as an aeroplane made of bread, and "burger sauce" shown as a tiny burger in a sauce pot (The Grocer)
- a sauvignon blanc whose tasting notes mentioned watermelon, shown as wine with chunks of watermelon floating in it (The Grocer)
One customer called the breakfast soda "the actual worst thing I've ever seen", The Grocer reported.
Why it went wrong
The pattern is the same every time. The AI read each word on the menu and drew it, without knowing what the dish actually is. "Soda" became a fizzy drink. "Plane" became an aeroplane. An ingredient in the description ended up sitting on the plate. Image generators are very good at what words usually look like, and much weaker at local food, odd spellings and context that any regular customer would understand.
What Just Eat says
"We've been trialling AI-enhanced images and as with any new technology, it isn't always quite right the first time," a spokesperson said. "We're sorry for any inaccurate images that have been posted. We're in the process of removing them and have paused rolling this out while we further develop the tool."
The company says restaurants can opt out and upload their own photos at any time. It also told The Journal it does not let restaurants upload their own AI-generated pictures, because it wants to keep the technology tightly controlled.
Why it matters
More and more of what we see online before we buy is drawn by AI rather than photographed. This time the mistakes were funny and obvious. The harder ones to spot are the pictures that look perfectly normal and are still wrong.
