Zomato Bans AI-generated Food Images After Surge In Complaints From Customers

Food delivery company Zomato "will actively start removing" the artificial intelligence (AI) generated images of dishes from restaurant menus after receiving several complaints from the customers, CEO Deepinder Goyal said on Sunday.

Goyal in a post on the social media platform "X" said that the company encourages various forms of AI to enhance the efficiency of the workforce, however, it will not use AI-generated images for representation of dishes in restaurant menus.

In the post Zomato CEO said, “At Zomato, we use various forms of AI, to make our workflows efficient. However, one place where we strongly discourage the use of AI is images for dishes in restaurant menus. AI-generated food/dish images are misleading, and we have received numerous customer complaints on this issue. Customers say that this leads to breach of trust, and it leads to higher complaints & refunds, and also, lower ratings.”

"We urge our restaurant partners to avoid using AI for dish images in restaurant menus from now onwards -- we will actively start removing such images from menus by the end of this month. And will stop accepting AI-generated dish images (as much as we can detect them using automation)," he added in the post.

Goyal further requested restaurant owners to reach out to the company if they haven't invested in real food shots for the menu.

"Restaurant owners - if you haven't yet invested in real food shots for your menu, please reach out to our catalogue support team," Goyal said in the post. Meanwhile, on August 16, the stocks of the company upped 1.77 per cent or 4.61 points.

The company has given a return of 112.65 per cent to the investors in last one year, showcasing a robust performance.

In June this year, the company informed the exchanges that it was in talks with Paytm to acquire movies and events businesses of the fintech.