recentIndiaMainstreamFood delivery platform Zomato Zomato has made a major decision, announcing that it will ban the use of AI-generated food images on restaurant menus. Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said the move was to protect customer trust, as the use of these AI images has brought a series of problems, such as increased customer complaints, higher refund rates, and lower restaurant ratings.
Goyal said in a post that from now on, they will encourage restaurant partners to stop using AI-generated dish images. Zomato plans to proactively start removing AI-generated images from the platform by the end of this month, and will use automation technology to detect and reject the upload of these images as much as possible.
For restaurant owners who haven’t invested in real food photography yet, Zomato suggests they can contact the company’s catalog support team to arrange for professional photography services. It’s worth mentioning that this service is provided at cost price and Zomato does not make any profit from it.
In addition to the request to restaurants, Zomato’s marketing team has also received instructions to prohibit the use of AI-generated food images in promotional materials in the future, which shows how seriously Zomato takes this issue.
Although Zomato has taken a hard stance in this regard, they are still active in generative AI. The company has a dedicated head of generative AI, Vaibhav Bhutani, who is working on some interesting projects like developing multi-agent systems to recommend food choices, enhance user engagement and experience, etc.
Zomato also recently introduced a “group ordering” feature that allows users to share a link with friends and family to add food items to the same shopping cart, eliminating the need to pass the phone around to collect everyone’s order. This feature is being rolled out to all users, making it easier to order food in groups.