I’m still thinking about this.
The pastelitos nestle in a wicker basket, golden and precisely crimped. Behind them two young, smiling people bite in. Their skin is smooth. Their nails are round.
Posted to the Facebook account of a Venezuelan restaurant in Spring called Fran’s Bakery, the photo looks perfect. A little too perfect.
It is, of course, AI. And it’s far from the only AI-generated image used to promote a local restaurant.
In the past several months, videos of talking boba and pictures of too-glossy food have saturated Instagram and local Facebook foodie groups. Some images are obviously fanciful: Penguins did not stop at an Indian restaurant in the Heights. Some look like caricatures or artsy posters. Others look much closer to reality.
For restaurant owners, the technology can save time and money. For diners, it can make it harder to tell what’s real. If they visit, will the restaurant’s interior look like that? Will the food be plated the same way?
“You have to be very careful, in all the food and other services,” said Susana De Carlo, the marketing specialist who generated that image for Fran’s Bakery.
De Carlo prefers to use real photos. But when the Fran’s Bakery team is too busy for a photo shoot, she sometimes generates a picture or video that looks as close to the real deal as she can get it. When images of food are involved, she makes them as accurate as possible, De Carlo said.
Francis Uzcategui, the co-owner of the restaurant, said AI has been “very helpful” in alleviating her work load.
But some consumers say they feel turned off by food photos that appear fake. Ryan Kasey Baker, a freelancer for Houston Food Finder who’s often on local Facebook groups, said he sees them everywhere.
“If (restaurants) don’t trust their food enough to sell it,” he asked, “why would I want to spend my own money?”
[…]
When Inna Klebanskaya opened Slice of Venice in Spring last year, she hired a marketing team. She paid them about $1,000 a month and wasn’t happy with the results.
So she took over, posting on at least four platforms regularly while running the restaurant. It took too much of her time; AI helped simplify the work. Klebanskaya generated images of a frowning pizza when the restaurant was struggling, and a pizza with a clock on it to indicate a change in hours.
Then negative feedback rolled in. Customers and online commenters told her they’d rather see real food. “People thought it was enhanced too much,” she said.
Now her Facebook feed is full of real photos of pepper-topped pizzas and crispy mozzarella sticks. Klebanskaya wishes she could rely more on AI. But she doesn’t want to drive people away.
[…]
Food photos have been polished for years, long before AI. Styling, editing and filters can all change how a dish appears.
“I don’t really see AI as any different than somebody that’s spray painting a turkey on TV to make it look juicy,” said John Frels, who sees plenty of AI posts on the Houston Heights Foodies Facebook group he runs.
I see a difference, and it’s right there in the embedded picture, which just looks kind of creepy to me. AI-generated photos often give me the uncanny valley feeling, though I have seen examples that are basically impossible to distinguish from the real thing. I also tend to find AI-generated art, like the first Cavatore example in the story, to be flat and uninteresting, which I think is basically the result of AI imagery being an amalgamation of every other image out there. That said, the later Cavatore images, which are done in a cartoon style, look fine to me. Maybe simpler is just better with these things.
I will always prefer human-generated art, whether they’re words or images or anything else. I can understand why a small, undercapitalized business like a restaurant might resort to do-it-yourself AI for its advertising needs, even if I don’t care for it. If their customers hate it, that’s just too bad. I’d advise them to use it sparingly and with a light touch, and be ready to pivot if the feedback is negative.
There’s quite a bit in the article, so go read the rest, it’s a gift link. Between this and robot cooking, Houston restaurants are certainly innovating.
Anyone wanting to view customer photos of a restaurant’s food and premises need only check the restaurant’s customer reviews and photos on their preferred map platform. This article seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill. I’d also expect deceptive promotional AI images used by restaurants to start being called out in the online reviews if it were to become an actual problem.
AI for this and not for that?