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Generated menu at a Mom&Pop restaurant made me physically ill (thelemmy.club)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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At a small restaurant in Tennessee, USA.

I don't like that they asked an LLM to graphic design the entire menu, but why in the name of robot jesus did they look at the result and say "great. Love it. Print 100 copies."

The food pictures made me physically ill. They're really upsetting! I told the Waitress, who agreed that the pics were awful, and the manager/owner(?) who didn't seem to care.

There are LLM inconsistencies all over, too, like icons changing from page to page.

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[–] 45 points 2 days ago* (9 children)

Taking a good looking picture of food is not actually all that easy, professionals earn(ed) a lot of money doing it.

That said i 100% prefer a casual real picture over the promotional art in a menu. I want to see what i am getting and i mean prefer it over the professional photo. Ai food looks absolutely disgusting.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    It's so easy, honestly. This is fresh mackerel with a baked potato, patty pan squash, sugar snap peas, beet tops and courgette.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    Yeah this "good pictures are hard" thing I keep hearing is nonsense to me. What the heck are people on about?

    I guess this doesn't look like a professional shot or something, but it's plenty informative and doesn't look Eldritch.

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  • [–] 12 points 2 days ago*

    Ehhhh, a smartphone with a common "food" filter and a decent angle on the food does a fairly good job these days. The small sensor actually gives just the right amount of depth of field, whereas a big camera would have to stop down or focus stack anyway.

    I agree with the sentiment though. Running a business is hard; they only have so much energy, so corners have to be cut, and they clearly tried to cut the media budget they'd need to stage every meal on the menu.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 days ago

    Honestly, taking a good enough picture of food is pretty easy, except when you want to be misleading.

    Tricks like knowing exactly what you are allowed and not allowed to substitute for 'better looking'. For example knowing you can substitute something for milk when taking picture of cereal, because something with glue 'looks nicer'. Or carefully arranging the ingredients so that while the burger is technically using the same ingredients as what you get, the ingredients are all to one side so it looks like more from the angle of the camera.

    For casually accurate pictures of a small restaurant menu, just take pictures in average lighting and it will be fine.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Considering they explicitly commented that photo quality isn't important, how good professional photos of food are isn't relevant.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

    Maybe i am blind but i dont think they explicitly said that.

    I just know that “traditionally” food industry does not make pictures themselves they hire a professional artist for doing so. That was just normal bussines. So they where never in the habbit of doing it themselves.

    While i never agreed with advertisment more fancy than the actual product. That is/was a career where people put real effort and artistic skill into. Its huge shame that its getting stolen by ai with literally 0 results.

    I wonder what pictures this menu had before ai.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 day ago

    Depends on the 'food industry'.

    Big chains, sure, they have photographers come in.

    The little chinese restauraunt near me, clearly they just snapped pictures of their food with smartphones and slapped them on the board. Their printed menu was just text. I suspect if this is a small restaurant, they probably just had text on menu, and thought AI could give them 'big restaurant' menu impression, but instead got horror show of crap. They probably could have provided some pictures and directed it to make a menu layout but do not generate images, but use these pictures.

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