Just Eat Pulls AI Food Images After Bacon-and-Egg Cola Fiasco

Just Eat is scrambling to remove AI-generated food images from its app after its models turned a Belfast cafe's bacon and egg soda bread into a glass of cola with a fried egg and bacon rashers floating in it. The platform confirmed to the BBC that it is "in the process of removing" the incorrect images and will pause generating new ones until the AI improves.

The delivery giant had been testing AI image generation to fill gaps for menu items that lacked photographs. The results went viral for the wrong reasons. Users on the Just Eat UK subreddit spent days cataloguing the failures: chips poking out of muffins, garlic bread shaped like an aeroplane — triggered by an apparent misspelling of "plain" — and a cheese roll rendered as slabs of cheese rolled into sushi.

The soda bread case shows exactly where the technology broke down. The AI conflated "soda" the drink with "soda bread" the Irish baked good, and the menu context offered no correction. It's a word-interpretation problem, not a picture-quality problem.

What does Just Eat say?

A company spokesperson framed the episode as a normal part of testing. "We've been trialling AI-enhanced images, and as with any new technology, it isn't always quite right the first time," they told the BBC.

The spokesperson also stressed the company's baseline approach: "We work with tens of thousands of small restaurants on their food imagery, including funding professional local photographers."

That scale matters. With tens of thousands of restaurant partners, professional photography for every menu item is expensive and slow — which is precisely the gap AI was meant to close.

What does this change for customers and restaurants?

For now, the misfires remain visible. Every AI image on the app carries a label identifying it as generated, and the BBC reported that many of the odd creations were still live on menus. Customers can at least see which pictures to distrust.

The reputational damage for restaurants is the sharper concern. A cafe that never asked for a cola-and-egg mocktail now has one attached to its listing. Just Eat hasn't detailed how it will compensate or communicate with affected partners; it has only committed to removal and a pause.

What are diners saying?

Reaction has split between amusement and genuine irritation. Some social media users called the images "hilarious". One took a different lesson: "Well, that lot just helped my diet."

The more substantive critique came from an Instagram user who questioned the premise entirely. "I want to see what the dish actually looks like as it helps me decide who to order from or what to order," they wrote. "These 'perfect' AI versions just lead to disappointment if that's what you think your meal will look like."

That comment cuts to the commercial risk. Food delivery runs on appetite appeal. An image that's wrong in an obvious way gets mocked; an image that's wrong in a flattering way sets expectations the kitchen can't meet.

The bigger picture

The incident underscores a persistent weakness in generative AI: systems trained on general language struggle with context-specific vocabulary. Menu jargon — soda bread, a plain roll, a cheese roll — is exactly the kind of domain language that produces confident nonsense.

Just Eat hasn't said when the AI trials will resume or what safeguards it will add first. Until then, the professional photographers it already funds look like the safer bet for restaurants that want their bacon and eggs photographed as food, not fizzy drinks.