Just Eat Apologizes After AI Menu Images Put Bacon and Eggs in Cola

The restaurant, which offers a range of soda breads, ended up with images of sausages, bacon and fried eggs floating in pints of fizzy drinks instead of the Irish breakfast sandwiches they were meant to represent, according to TechRadar. The bacon-and-egg cola image was not the only example produced during the trial; other images were posted on the uknewestfoods Instagram page. The trial was part of a new AI-powered system for Just Eat.

A Just Eat spokesperson told The Independent, as reported by TechRadar: "We've been trialling AI-enhanced images and as with any new technology, it isn't always quite right the first time. 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 to ensure it best serves our partners and customers."

Just Eat is not the only delivery platform testing the technology. Last week, DoorDash opened its text-to-order AI agent for testing, allowing users to text what they want and receive a dish recommendation with a photo. Bloomberg News testers found several errors during testing, including photos that did not match the recommendation, TechRadar reported.

Michael Bortinger, director of marketing and partnerships at Tastewise, said in the TechRadar report that image models do not understand a specific dish. "An image model has no concept of a specific dish. It renders the average of everything labeled 'burger', and better tools just make that average more convincing. There are pages of brand rules for how a logo sits on a cup and nothing at all for what's in the burger," he said.

TechRadar reported that the bigger concern may be AI-generated images that look perfectly believable, because smaller inaccuracies such as a wrong-sized dish or a missing topping can be harder to spot than obvious errors like the cola image. The report also questioned why delivery platforms and restaurants are using AI to generate images of food that customers are ordering, noting that the technology could save time but may not produce a faithful representation of the food.