Walk around the District and you’re sure to see it: a restaurant making a name for itself with unusual-looking AI-generated “food.”
It’s not hard to miss them. Some advertisements feature crispy chicken fillets, texture covered with warts or a chicken parm that looks more like a smiling monster than an authentic Italian sandwich. A poster next to Lumier’s Chimney Cake at The Wharf, which appears to be made with AI, misspells the name of the Hungarian treat as “chimney cakes”, leaving out the e.
The undesirable images have alarmed some Washington, D.C. residents enough to complain online, and they often cite the same concern: false advertising. If a food stand displays a fully loaded baked potato with even rows of bacon bits atop a unnatural mound of sour cream, what happens when it can’t deliver?
Libby O’Neill, vice president of advertising, marketing and promotions at law firm Loeb & Loeb, said the use of AI-generated food images is not illegal by default. This only becomes a problem if the image grossly misrepresents the quality or quantity of the product.
“There is no simple percentage or visual threshold, but if you think about it from a legal perspective, regulators and courts will look at the overall impression, whether the difference is material given what a reasonable consumer would expect,” she said.
If the Washington Council tried to crack down on AI-generated ads, O’Neill said she could imagine the District doing so through a bill aimed at protecting jobs — such as food photographers and graphic designers — that AI eliminates, instead of banning the practice outright.
Scott Suchman, a food photographer based in Washington for more than 20 years, said seeing “slop” ads about AI in the nation’s capital saddens him. He said it felt good, though, when people stood up to ads in defense of creative professionals.
Suchman knows that advertising and marketing can come with a high price and that profit margins for restaurants and small businesses have been slim since the pandemic. But he still saw “terrible things”.
“The images look like garbage,” he said. “The food doesn’t look anything like this. It boggles my mind that people look at this and think it looks good, or that it even looks like what they’re selling, whether it’s a cheeseburger or a chicken wing, mac and cheese, sushi, whatever.”
General Council Member Christina Henderson, who chairs the DC Committee on Health, presented a bill in October to prevent companies from using AI-generated images for real estate listings. She said a bill against AI-generated food images on menus was unlikely, however.
“I feel like everyone is using ChatGPT for their flyers or advertisements these days,” Henderson said. “I feel like with food it’s a little different. Partly because food marketing has been artificial for a while.”
A poster for Lumier’s Chimney Cake at The Wharf misspells the name of the Hungarian treat as “chimney cakes”, leaving out the e.
Secret Justice/The Washington Sun
Since the Washington Council isn’t supposed to go after AI-related food ads, the public had to use an old-fashioned approach to push back on the “slop” — which is a shame.
Secret Justice/The Washington Sun
Henderson said bills that would protect creative professionals like Suchman from losing their jobs to AI should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Innovation has long affected the job market, she said, citing telephone switchboard operators as an example of a profession made obsolete by technological advances.
“There were hundreds of people whose only job was to connect phone calls,” Henderson said. “When innovation happened, yes, hundreds of people lost their jobs. But no one passed a law to say, ‘No, we have to keep connecting phones manually.'”
Since the district isn’t supposed to go after AI food ads and the companies could likely skirt false advertising complaints, the public was forced to use an old-fashioned approach to fending off the “slop” — too bad.
Bread Furst, a bustling Van Ness bakery that makes handmade baguettes, was a recent target. The bakery surprised some customers in September by using an AI-generated image of a Roman sandwich on a banner to announce, among other things, an artistic event.
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The bakery’s general manager, Scott Auslander, told the Washington Sun in October that his team had just played with ChatGPT to create the design out of curiosity, not expecting it to garner so much backlash following a post on Reddit.
“Most of the comments came online; we heard from a few people in the store, but most were from people online, maybe sad to see kind of an old-fashioned business in the community using AI,” Auslander said. “We just thought it would be fun to make a poster for an event.”
Bread Furst apologized for the banner in a Instagram post in which employees held up pieces of paper with messages explaining that they would focus on using artificial advertisements in the future. It was well-received and Auslander said it was his best-performing post on the company’s social media channels.
They weren’t the only ones apologizing for using AI.
Grubb’s, DC’s oldest pharmacy, released a similar excuses on Instagram, with the store’s chief pharmacist, Dr. Michael Kim, holding up pieces of paper after the pharmacy used AI-generated content to promote its new tea lab.
Buffalo & Bergen also responded to criticism for posting an AI-generated Instagram poster of a man with one arm behind holding a bag of bagels for Father’s Day. The owner, Gina Chersevani, told the Washingtonian AI’s post and image didn’t receive much attention, as it was her first Father’s Day since her husband died last year.
“Luckily, the internet stepped in to remind me that after 14 years of running a small business, employing people, supporting the community, and serving millions of bagels, I should never try to learn something new,” Chersevani posted on social media following the online backlash.
Those who advocate the use of AI-generated ads are quick to say that it’s not OK to bully small businesses trying to get by, because using AI can save people time and money. Bread Furst’s Auslander said saving money wasn’t what motivated them.
“I don’t know if we even considered money, and I can understand how some people would say, it’s cheaper, it’s easier, it’s faster,” Auslander said. “Frankly, I think we spent more time on it, because we were kind of just people learning.”
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