Will remove AI-generated food images: Zomato CEO after complaints

After several customers complained about artificial intelligence- (AI) generated food and dish images on Zomato, CEO Deepinder Goyal on Sunday announced plans to remove such pictures from the platform.

The AI images of dishes on the food delivery giant were intended to add visual appeal to the food and also enhance the presentation of dishes.

However, taking to social media platform X.com, Goyal said he has "received numerous complaints about these misleading images".

This, he said, not only "leads to breach of trust between customers and restaurants" but also "increased refunds and lower customer ratings".

"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," Goyal said.

"We urge our restaurant partners to avoid using AI for dish images in restaurant menus from now onwards," the CEO said, adding that the platform "will actively start removing such images from menus by the end of this month".

Last year, Zomato introduced PicNic AI (Picture Nicely AI) -- a tool to boost the visual presentation of food images on its platform -- to assist restaurant partners in upgrading their basic food images effortlessly.

Goyal further noted that Zomato will also "stop accepting AI-generated dish images (as much as we can detect them using automation)".

He called on both restaurant owners and in-house marketing team "to stop using AI-generated images for marketing purposes".

At the same time, he encouraged restaurant partners to invest in real food photography from Zomato for free of cost.

"Restaurant owners – if you haven't yet invested in real food shots for your menu, please reach out to our catalogue support team, to schedule a photoshoot".

"This is offered to you as a pass-through cost; Zomato doesn't make any money as part of this process," Goyal said.

Meanwhile, the online food aggregator recently reported a 74 per cent growth (year-on-year) in revenue to Rs. 4,206 crore in Q1 FY25.

It posted over 126 per cent growth in net profit to reach Rs. 253 crore in the April-June quarter (Q1 FY25), from Rs. 2 crore in net profit in the same quarter last year.

(With inputs from IANS)