During a recent lunch break, Jill Sennett saw something so unappetizing she had to share it with her 26,000 The images were shared by more than 500 people who similarly expressed their displeasure. Eating is “a very essential human experience,” said Sennett, a 37-year-old nurse in Denver. “I think it’s a bad cultural thing that restaurants are adapting to these horrible, strange images of food that are unappetizing.” Still, Sennett ordered chicken and macaroni and cheese. It was one of his only lunch options and he had eaten there before. Increasingly, consumers are encountering AI-generated images of food on restaurant menus or in marketing materials. Diners like Sennett say the images are unattractive and misleading, while restaurants say they are trying to cut costs at a time when food and labor prices are high, so profit margins are slim. A menu from a pop-up Jamaican BBQ restaurant. Photo: Jill Sennett A 2026 report from the National Restaurant Association found that 26% of restaurant operators use AI to help with marketing, inventory management, employee scheduling, menu optimization and order taking. But consumer reaction to the technology can be swift and fierce, especially in the Bay Area, a hotbed for AI development. When San Francisco cafe Grind & Unwind posted a sign displaying menu options that locals quickly identified as AI-generated, vandals painted the front of the store with a word that the cafe’s owner, Lyndsey Lozano, deciphered as “seriously.” In a Reddit post titled “Yum, slop,” commenters compared images of the bread to textures like reptile skin and a loofah. Lozano told SFGate in July that the response was “not what we expected” and that the signage was only meant to be temporary. Lozano and her husband removed the IA signs and spent an estimated $700 to paint over the graffiti, according to SFGate. Lozano did not respond to The Guardian’s request for comment. Sennett is pleased that AI is altering food images so much. “You can create amazing celebrity videos, but you can’t depict a burger,” Sennett said. “I hope it stays like this, honestly, and we can embarrass ourselves. [restaurants] “The manager at the Jamaican Jerk and Barbecue Restaurant, the Denver restaurant that was hosting a pop-up at Sennett Hospital, confirmed that he had used ChatGPT for menu images instead of paying a graphic designer like he does for his physical location. “We decided we would design something that was eye-catching,” he said, declining to give his name for the post. “The restaurant people are trying to be profitable.” As the standards for AI in advertising are still being established, some restaurant industry professionals are thinking critically about when AI could be advantageous or detrimental to their businesses. Hunter Lewis, editor-in-chief of Food and Wine magazine, said he’s seeing restaurants grow as they begin to automate parts of their back-end operations. But the use of the technology should be invisible to diners, since AI images can be “a real turnoff,” Lewis noted. “The American dining public is smart,” he said, “they know what they want and they know what’s real.” hand-drawn images of its burgers on social media, when Wyoming restaurant Chugwater Soda Fountain shared its promise, written on a piece of cardboard, the Instagram post garnered more than 200,000 likes. Some commenters celebrated the homemade authenticity, while others pointed out the irony of posting the message on an AI-powered platform. Often, what the AI gets wrong is the texture of the food, said Jamie Soja, a professional photographer in the Bay Area who has taken images. for restaurant marketing. and for food delivery services. “The color, texture and ingredients look a little strange in the way they are arranged,” Soja said, adding that the lighting can also look unnatural. AI-enhanced images seen on DoorDash. the company in an emailed statement. Company policies prohibit restaurants from creating or altering misleading images of menu items. DoorDash says it reviews menu images to ensure compliance. A cursory search turned up some images marked with DoorDash’s “AI-enhanced” label, which is automatically applied when a restaurant uses its AI editing tool. Still, it can be difficult to determine whether the images are AI-generated or simply over-edited, even for a professional photographer like Soja. Researchers are beginning to study how viewing AI food images affects consumers’ opinions and appetite. In a 2024 study, Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, found that consumers generally preferred AI-generated food images when they didn’t know they were made by a machine, yet after that revelation, diners found the images less appealing. It found that robots alter food in predictable ways: AI often adds fat, such as butter to mashed potatoes, when asked to make food images look more appealing. Spence worries that such AI images could unconsciously push diners and chefs toward larger portions with higher fat content. AI images can leave a bad taste in consumers’ mouths, particularly those who work with technology day in and day out. When Brandon Hill, CEO of a design and marketing agency in San Francisco, recently stopped by Bella Cafe downtown, he was so put off by its AI images that he took a photo and shared it with his more than 86,000 X followers with a caption in Japanese. San Francisco… places are starting to use generative AI for menu images. But they don’t look that appetizing, you know,” reads the English translation of the post by She said she and her husband are “old-fashioned,” and added that experimenting with AI is “fun” and “new for us.” She also uses ChatGPT to help write reference letters for workers and put together the cafe’s employee handbook. In addition to saving money on graphic design, Norero Salvatore likes the look of AI images. “I think it’s a great way to advertise our products, though sometimes. [people] “They say AI is not effective or not natural,” he said.
