Rubin Verebes is the managing editor of Foodie and is very opinionated. Transforming his hobby of eating and drinking into a career, he shares his account of Hong Kong’s F&B scene and the worldwide state of dining in Rubin’s Take, his dedicated opinion column.
I will not eat at restaurants that use generative AI to market themselves.
Since its prompt emergence within our lives from 2022, AI technology has been deployed to market restaurants, a practice as old as restaurants itself, producing posters for offline advertising and generating embellished and upscaled food products for social media.
AI sometimes hallucinates, something we have witnessed for years now. It renders “thoughts” from its black box in the ether and on occasion produces artifacts in imagery, text, and video that lack a grounding in reality.
In Hong Kong, I have seen restaurants “market” pasta dishes crafted in the shape of a horse, customers with unrendered swirly faces clasping perfectly presented beer pints, plates of French fries fusing together like potato mash, shape-shifting dumplings, undulating slices of lettuce resembling the form of a sinewave, and geometrically impossible burger stacks.
Why is this technology inherently bad for customers? Shoddy generative AI-powered marketing causes a disconnect between the human-made food people are served and its half-baked imagery concocted online.
The impression it gives to customers is that if a restaurant does not want to invest financially, in resources, time, or energy, to market their products, instead trusting AI to do the hard work, there may be less thought given to actually making the food taste good.
As tech-focused media company 404 Media puts it, we are living in the midst of a “ChatGPT Flyer Pandemic.”
You have seen a ChatGPT flyer before. Notice one and its ubiquitous, anonymous, grotesque, flashy style becomes apparent. They feature “big, flashy bright text on dark background,” “Al-generated image[s],” “generic icons in a bulleted list tied to whatever it’s advertising,” “bolded words or underlined text,” and “tons of arrows and checkmarks haphazardly strewn throughout,” according to the 404 Media article.
The generative AI marketing propagated online all bleeds into one synonymous and scary sight. It forces a homogeneity in restaurant dining, with one burger restaurant indistinguishable from its competitors. To survive in Hong Kong’s restaurant scene, or anywhere for that matter, restaurants need an edge to reign customers inside.
These practices hurt the industry of marketers, designers, and advertisers who warrant opportunities to create meaningful human-centric work for restaurants. Such skills, careers, and whole industries would be lost if a reliance on generative AI grows too strong.
If budgets are too constrained, free apps like Canva offer solutions to create posters, graphics, menus, and social media posts that can attract eyes and bookings. Just avoid their AI tools to create food that doesn’t exist.
I would rather see amateur-designed art made by humans with frills and human mistakes to market your happy hour or new menu than generative AI creating something unworldly. If time is an issue, just take photos of your food and upload them.
Food marketing deserves and requires soul. Only humans can ever know what food tastes like; generative AI can only guess. If I review and cover restaurants made by humans for a living, I would hope humans can market them to entice me to visit.
The views expressed in this column are those of the authors and do not represent or reflect the views of Foodie.
