It Sure Looks Like Uber Eats Used AI-Generated Food Photos

Photographing food in a way that makes it look tasty can often involve doing things to that food that render it inedible. It’s not terribly surprising to open a food delivery app and notice that the images illustrating a slice of pizza, a breakfast sandwich or a salad are stock photos rather than images of the actual food for sale at a given restaurant. And, again, there’s a reason for that: great food doesn’t always translate into the visual world, as anyone who’s sought the perfect angle for a photo of dinner can attest.

Still, there are stock photos and there are stock photos, and someone appears to have caught Uber Eats (or a restaurant using the platform) in an embarrassing trip back from the uncanny valley. Twitter user @realonlineboy posted a few screenshots taken on the app along with the suggestion that the accompanying images were AI-generated. It’s not hard to fault his logic.

Consider: the “medium whole pie” depicted looks like a dessert rather than a pizza. The image of ranch dressing features a bottle with a brand name that doesn’t seem to exist. And the images of actual pizza on there also look ever-so-slightly off, as though they were reverse-engineered by aliens to sate the appetites of some unlucky abductees.

Uber Eats is using AI for pictures of food. It doesn’t know that “pie” means pizza, and it invented a brand of ranch dressing called “Lelnach” pic.twitter.com/raFZArsERN
— Listen to Online Boy on Spotify or else (threat) (@realonlineboy) November 30, 2023

In a followup post, @realonlineboy clarified that he was familiar with the restaurant and would be contacting them this weekend to get to the bottom of the issue — and to see who was responsible. And yes, the eatery in question is a dedicated pizza establishment, not a pizzeria with a sideline in baked desserts.

How to Make Italian American-Style Sicilian Pizza

Once you master this pan-baked pie, it’ll quickly become your go-to

We are, unfortunately, living in a world where AI-generated photos are used more and more frequently and are purported to be the real thing — whether they’re of food, people or news events.

Here, the situation gets even thornier, as these images seem to be working at cross-purposes to Uber Eats’ business model — namely, getting people to order food. In other words, it’s hard to imagine someone unfamiliar with the restaurant in question looking at those images, thinking, “Damn, that looks delicious” and sending in an order.

Meet your guide

Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…