According to The Guardian, during lunchtime, Jill Sennett saw an AI-generated menu image from a Jamaican barbecue pop-up restaurant—meat that looked like strips of leather with tiny beetles crawling on it. She shared the photo with her 26,000 followers on X, and it was retweeted by more than 500 people, many expressing the same disgust. The 37-year-old nurse, who lives in Denver, said eating "is one of the most fundamental human experiences," and that restaurants using such "terrifying, weird, and unappetizing" images represents a bad cultural trend. However, due to limited lunch options, she eventually ordered chicken and macaroni and cheese.

Restaurants Use AI to Save Costs, Consumers React Quickly and Strongly

Now, more and more consumers are seeing AI-generated food pictures in restaurant menus and marketing materials. Diners believe these images are not appealing and may mislead customers, while restaurants say that using AI can reduce costs amid rising food and labor costs and shrinking profits. A 2026 report by the National Restaurant Association found that 26% of restaurant owners are using AI to assist with marketing, inventory management, staff scheduling, menu optimization, and order processing.

Reactions often come quickly, especially in the highly concentrated AI area of the San Francisco Bay Area. After a San Francisco café Grind & Unwind put up an AI-generated menu sign, someone painted graffiti on the storefront wall, which Lindsay Losano identified as "seriously." In a Reddit post titled "Yum, slop," commenters criticized the bread in the image resembling reptile skin and others comparing it to a loofah. Losano later removed the sign and spent about $700 to repaint the wall.

Research: Attractiveness Drops When Informed, AI Also Loves to Add Butter

Professor Charles Spence, a psychologist at the University of Oxford, found in a 2024 study that when consumers did not know the images were generated by machines, they usually preferred AI-generated images; but once they knew they were made by AI, their attractiveness dropped. He also found that when users asked to make the food more appealing, AI often automatically added fat elements, like adding more butter to mashed potatoes, which could subconsciously influence diners and chefs, making them prefer larger portions and higher-fat foods.

Professional photographer Jamie Soya said that AI is most prone to errors in food texture: "The color, texture, and arrangement of ingredients always look a bit off," and lighting is often unnatural. The delivery platform DoorDash provides an AI image tool that allows adjustments to lighting, color, or background and automatically adds the label "AI-enhanced" to relevant images, and its policy prohibits creating or modifying misleading menu images.

Editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, Hunter Lewis, believes this technology should not be noticeable to diners, "American diners are smart; they know what they want and what is real." Some restaurants have gone viral online for openly committing "never to use AI," with a restaurant in Wyoming writing this commitment on a signboard and posting it on Instagram, earning over 200,000 likes.