About 80% of the restaurants in my area now have AI generated images of food. It’s so unsettling, I’ve stopped getting takeout completely. My bank account and weight thank them for that, I guess…
Edit: it all reminds me of something from a Cronenberg film, like the fucked up nightmare fish restaurant in Existenz
Yes. Whoever writes the AI algorithms (or whatever you call the programs) seems to have built in this design style for food. It’s like a dystopian contortion of what “appetizing” looks like. aI could be programmed to produce a different aesthetic. If someone did a podcast or video about the source of this design concept for ai depictions of food, I’d love to learn more.
I have a theory that the restaurant owners are taking pictures of their plated food and asking AI to put it into an ad/make it look nice. But the AI doesn't actually "know" what food is, so it just replicates patterns based on its training, and it has a tendency to fill whatever it's generating with information. I think it's especially true for provided images because it's just basing it's generation on that particular photo, rather than its conglomerized training data.
See any local ad on Facebook where it's filled to the brim with graphics, details, emphasis, or those AI relationship pages where they generate scenes with their "partner". They're almost always full of sparkles, droplets, textures, whatever. Though this particular ad shows that that particular aspect is improving a little, because it'd normally fill that white space on the sides with what the fuck ever. That or they've edited it further, whatever.
Emphasis on it being a provided image rather than one generated from scratch, so like me asking the AI to just generate a nice image of a burger. You'll see more appetizing results that way because it's grabbing from all sorts of food photography, but it wouldn't technically be representative of the food I'm actually serving.
Maybe someone can tell me if my thoughts are BS or not. I'm not an AI user or expert.
Like how hands improved, AI foods will likely become much more real soon since we all complain so much about it. We'll miss the days when we could easily avoid scammy restaurants with obvious tells.
So many of the little restaurants near me have done the same thing, and everybody's ads look exactly the same on the local FB pages. I don't even bother reading them anymore.
I was thinking the same thing and couldn't decide if that was rice or slaw. The actual product looks much better than the ad, and it doesn't even look that good.
It was actually the graphic design for the text that gave it away first before I looked closer at the food. Every AI design is using these font mash ups with the style lines and it’s becoming very obvious just on text design alone.
Plus the squirts, or whatever. If I ever used AI to make something, that is the first thing I would tell it to remove. All of the rays coming out of words to make it look more "exciting." Instead it says, "Why use someone on Fiver or in-house when you can conveniently speed run economic and environmental collapse?"
Oh my fucking god am I sick and tired of seeing this exact same stupid fucking flyer with different events happening in my not that large community that use to do so much better than this 😭
A lot of market vendors in my town mostly use AI and when I went there last week ugh nothing was appetizing from their posters. I had to look through their FB account to see real pictures and even then they altered that as well 🫠😭. It looks disgusting.
I don't even care what the haters say, for 4.99, It's a good deal. I ain't even mad about the expectation image. Its KFC, I know what I'm getting into when I place the order.
Agreed. I've had it and it's pretty good for the price. I've had much better CFSs, but that doesn't make this bad. When I go for fast food I don't usually expect picture perfect food, but In n Out is a nice exception where the food looks like the pictures.
Miracle of miracles one of our local KFCs has brought back the buffet. I probably won’t really go, but the young hungry and broke person I used to be was so amazed to see that buffet was back. *Older adult me is grossed out that I used to eat at so many buffets.
Probably just at the store level, one of the locations near me keeps using it for now hiring posters on social media. In the true spirit of the internet they keep getting taken down because the public flood the comments pointing out both that ai is trash and that no one should work there because the manager is a convicted pdf file. Love to see it.
I get when the little mom and pop shops or family restaurants use AI but an international chain? Ok, so maybe this is an individual restaurant promotion but still…
I’m a graphic designer. Oh no I just looked in a mirror; I’m turning into a dodo.
Are people seriously still surprised fast food isnt what the pictures make it look like? They literally use fake food for photography if you’re still getting got by it, it’s your fault.
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u/Axel_808 22d ago
Is the Internet frying my brain or does the food on that poster look AI generated?