AI food photos on Swiggy and Zomato becoming harder to detect
While Swiggy allows some use of AI for images of food on its platform, Zomato has adopted a firmer policy. Even so, photos of unnatural-looking food items are easy to spot — and miss
AI-generated food images on popular food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato are becoming increasingly difficult for customers to distinguish from authentic meals. Customers often experience disappointment upon receiving takeout meals that fall short of the enticing visuals displayed in app thumbnails. A visual inspection of the Swiggy app revealed numerous restaurants employing AI-generated images for a range of dishes, such as noodles, pizza, and pulao.
Although certain red flags, like unrealistic textures and unnatural colors, can hint at AI usage, other images may appear genuine until users zoom in to uncover faint AI disclaimers. Swiggy's disclaimer page for restaurants utilizing AI-generated images acknowledges the "better experience" provided by AI-crafted dish details, but this label is easily overlooked by hurried users.
In November 2023, Swiggy launched an "AI-Fuelled Photoshoot" feature to enhance restaurant menus, with sample photos showcasing brighter and more colorful dishes. However, recent advancements in AI text-to-image models empower eateries to generate images of food that may not even be feasible to recreate in reality. In contrast, Zomato has taken a more stringent stance, discouraging the use of AI for menu images in August 2024.
The company's CEO, Deepinder Goyal, expressed strong opposition to AI-generated food/dish images, citing customer complaints about misleading visuals and the resulting loss of trust, higher complaint and refund rates, and lower ratings. Goyal also announced that Zomato would remove existing AI-generated images and cease accepting new ones.
Despite the prohibition on Zomato, numerous restaurants continue to utilize heavily edited images that exhibit telltale signs of AI generation, such as pizzas with unnatural toppings and overly uniform noodles. The advancement of AI models, which can produce hyper-realistic images with fewer machine-generated artifacts, further facilitates restaurants in presenting false representations of their food.
While restaurants and food delivery apps benefit from AI-generated images, the ultimate victim is the discerning customer. Terms & conditions | Institutional Subscriber Comments must be in English, full sentences, and adhere to community guidelines against abusive or personal remarks.
Written by urgent.news from The Hindu - Sci-Tech's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
