A site for restaurateurs offers a one-of-a-kind tool: artificial intelligence for generating food images.
Do you want to make your friends believe that you are at the restaurant? Want to feed your Instagram account with photos of mouth-watering food, even if you’re at home? Do you want to have fun taking pictures of imaginary dishes? Look no further, we have the solution for you: artificial intelligence.
Lunchbox, a company specializing in software development for restaurants, has partnered with OpenAI, the company behind the Dall-E image-generating artificial intelligence. The two have developed a tool that is surprising to say the least: a food image generator. It is accessible for free here – and the results are quite realistic, even if some photos still have visual aberrations.
Why create food photos with AI for restaurants?
The news was spotted by BFM on February 13, 2023, and raises some questions. Why develop a tool to generate photos of food specifically for restaurants, when they cook food on a daily basis? Why would they need these tools?
For Nabeer Alamgir, CEO of Lunchbox, interviewed by Business Insider, the answer is simple: to sell even more on delivery applications. Lunchbox, which was launched in the United States, was thinking in particular of sales platforms like DoorDash, the equivalent of Deliveroo, which are immensely popular. On the latter, restaurants need beautiful photos of their dishes to stand out, and to be sure to attract customers.
According to Nabeer Alamgir, restaurants that add photos to their menus receive 70% more orders than restaurants that do not. Lunchbox and AI-generated photos would be there to help small restaurants stay competitive, even if they don’t have access to professional photographers.
His idea works: since the launch of the site on January 19, more than 175 million photos have been generated, says Nabeer Alamgir. It remains to be seen whether customers will not be confused by photos that appear realistic at first sight, but which regularly contain errors. And, above all, if they won’t be disappointed when they see a dish that’s visually different from the one they discovered on the app. In the meantime, you can do like us and use the tool to image improbable and funny dishes, like this appetizing shoe puree or this utterly gourmet toilet paper salad.
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