From cartoonish-looking sandwiches to doughnut-shaped shrimp, AI might be on the menu at your local fast-food restaurant.
Diners have taken to the internet to share photos of sandwich boards and window displays bearing food they say looks rubbery, surreal and seems to be created with artificial intelligence tools — which have made it increasingly easy to generate visuals on the cheap.
“This looks like what aliens would put in a presentation about what Earth food is,” a Reddit user captioned in a post accompanied by a picture of a sandwich board with breaded shrimp and gyros with suspiciously geometric textures.
Others described a CNE sandwich they assumed to be AI-generated as “uncanny and nauseating” and “slop.”
And for some Toronto customers, these kinds of images aren’t just stomach-turning — they take them as a signal of the restaurant’s values.
“I feel like it’s really inauthentic and it doesn’t make me wanna go eat at your restaurant,” said Cynthia Lem.
For her, AI-generated imagery raises questions about what the actual food would look like once it arrives, making her wary of any establishments using the technology.
While some consumers say these images are ruining their appetites and raising worries about possible misrepresentations of menu items, those in the restaurant business say it’s helped them reduce costs in a notoriously difficult industry. And marketing experts say use of the tech isn’t necessarily bad if it’s done thoughtfully.
Not all AI use created equally
Before taking a single bite, restaurant-goers rely heavily on imagery to dictate what they order, according to business consultant and Schulich School of Business marketing professor David Pullara. And that means businesses relying on heavy-handed AI imagery are taking a big risk.
“Great food photography sells,” said Pullara. “So if you’re using AI to generate an image that’s terrible, it’s going to hurt your sales, it’s going to hurt your brand.”
But while some consumers might object to the use of AI on principle, he thinks the risk of using it to enhance food photography is low if done well — especially if it can help small- and medium-sized businesses manage their costs.
Restaurant businesses face thin margins, often making it difficult to turn a profit. According to Restaurants Canada’s most recent survey of some of its members, 41 per cent said they were operating at a loss or just breaking even, with rising fuel costs only exacerbating issues.
Pullara says hiring a professional photographer is expensive, and might be out of budget for a small restaurant business. For that reason, taking a high-resolution photo of food and using an AI application to make small tweaks could create an image worthy of putting on a menu, Pullara says.
“I don’t think it’s the AI that makes the image unappealing. I think the problem is asking AI for a photo and just not using a common-sense filter about [whether] this actually looks good,” Pullara said.
That tweaking of real photos is how the marketing team at The Fancy Induced Burger uses AI.
A marketing manager for the Canadian franchise, Fez Mian, says he’ll snap a picture of a burger as it comes out of the kitchen and run it through an AI application like ChatGPT, prompting it to enhance the texture and freshness of menu items. Those images are used across the business — on menus, in-store posters and online.
The company doesn’t rely on professional photographers or graphic designers as much these days as a result. That’s saved them money and time, as Mian no longer needs to book a photographer, wait for the shoot date and then wait to receive the images before using them in marketing.
“We’re not, like, spending endless time planning and scheduling and whatnot,” Mian said. “Within … five minutes, 10 minutes it’s out the door.”
That speed is especially important on social media, Mian says, enabling them to create and post new content more frequently.
Does AI cross the line into false advertising?
For some consumers, the worry is about how the food item that shows up on their plate will compare to the enhanced image on the menu.
More small restaurants are turning to AI instead of professional photographers to generate food pictures for their menus, but the often unrealistic images are starting to turn some customers off.
If AI imagery is vastly different from the actual product, Rotman School of Management marketing professor David Soberman says that could be a problem.
“You wanna make your products look good, but you don’t want your products to be misleading,” Soberman said. If an AI-enhancement makes a steak look like it’s an inch thick but the actual product is half the size, for example, that would be a problem.
But the same is true for food imagery enhanced using run-of-the-mill staging and image editing, Soberman says. Both Soberman and Pullara say they don’t think AI imagery generally raises the likelihood of misleading consumers, especially since most have come to accept that images on menu boards will look better than the real deal.
“I think people just kind of know that there’s going to be some variance between what you’re seeing on these professionally shot, produced photos and what you actually can have prepared in the back of the kitchen in two minutes,” Pullara said.
At The Fancy Induced Burger, Mian says there’s always a human involved in checking the company’s AI-enhanced images to make sure no extra ingredients were added in the process that might mislead customers.
Still, Toronto-based food stylist Zoe Rousseau says they think the work they do is more authentic than AI-generated food imagery.
Despite some common misconceptions based on industry standards from decades ago, Rousseau says food staging doesn’t involve fake food most of the time. Instead, they take their time to pick the best-looking ingredients, make sure they’re perfectly placed, and work with a team of photographers and prop stylists who help achieve a beautiful end product.
Rousseau says they understand why small businesses trying to cut down costs would try AI, but if the generated imagery simply “doesn’t look like the food,” it won’t work to pull customers in.
“I think that restaurateurs are better off taking pictures with their iPhone,” Rousseau said.
For that reason, they’re not too worried about AI coming for their job. They hope that the backlash to AI menu items might even compel more businesses to invest in stylists and photographers, boosting their industry.
“I can play with texture and I can play with angles,” Rousseau said. “Just the freshness of it … the AI can’t do that.”
