AI-generated food images are drawing a backlash from customers who say bizarrely perfect sandwiches, pastries and drinks look less like lunch than computer-made “slop”. The trend has been particularly visible in New York, where sidewalk signs advertising croissant sandwiches, affogato and chopped cheese have circulated widely online.
One post by X user Maggie Moda, featuring several of the images, attracted 2.8 million views. Viewers pointed to repeating holes in sandwiches, unnaturally uniform ingredients and cheese that appeared to melt seamlessly across every piece of meat.
The images are being used by restaurants and delis as a quick, inexpensive alternative to professional food photography. For small businesses operating with limited time and money, the technology offers a way to produce polished-looking promotional material almost instantly.
But the same convenience has raised questions about whether customers are being shown food that the restaurant does not actually serve. Unlike traditional advertising images, which may use styling tricks or substitute ingredients to make a dish look more appealing, generative AI can create a photorealistic meal that never existed.
Restaurants remove AI food images after backlash
At Grind & Unwind, a café and restaurant on San Francisco’s Haight Street, owners AJ and Lyndsey Lozano used AI-generated images in their window after opening in May. The temporary display was mocked online, with one Reddit post titled “Yum, slop” attracting more than 670 upvotes.
The response escalated beyond criticism on social media. Graffiti appeared on the restaurant’s awning, and the Lozanos removed the AI display on July 6, replacing it with a pastry display while estimating that repainting the frontage would cost more than $700. ([sfgate.com](https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/grind-unwind-ai-images-22348931.php/?utm_source=openai))
Lyndsey Lozano said the images had been intended as a short-term measure while the couple opened their first restaurant and cared for three children under five. The business had not yet installed a permanent sign.
A similar explanation was given at Chicago’s Chi-Town Deli, where manager Ali Malik said an employee had created AI images for a temporary sign while the restaurant waited for a replacement featuring real photographs.
The criticism has focused on visual details that are difficult to ignore. Croissants appear to contain impossible layers, ingredients form identical rows and some burritos and sandwiches are covered in evenly spaced holes. One widely shared image became known online as the “trypophobia burrito”, referring to the discomfort some people feel when confronted with clustered patterns of holes.
Other examples show cheese with no clear beginning or end, lettuce with a rigid, brick-like texture and food that appears glossy in a way customers say makes it look inedible. The images have become recognisable enough for users to describe the style collectively as AI food “slop”.
When does an appetising image become misleading?
Restaurants have long used lighting, styling and substitute ingredients to make food appear more attractive in adverts. A 1965 US Supreme Court case involving Colgate-Palmolive considered the use of mashed potatoes as a stand-in for ice cream, distinguishing between a harmless prop and an image used to make a misleading claim about a product. ([govinfo.gov](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USREPORTS-380/pdf/USREPORTS-380-374.pdf?utm_source=openai))
Rebecca Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor specialising in advertising and trademark law, said an artificial image would not necessarily be unlawful if consumers understood it as a general representation of the type of food being sold.
However, the image could become deceptive if a reasonable customer interpreted it as a claim about the meal’s ingredients, size, quantity, quality or appearance. Labelling an image as AI-generated may explain how it was made, but does not automatically correct a false impression about the product itself.
That leaves restaurants with a straightforward commercial test: the food shown in an advert should be close enough to the food customers receive for the image not to promise something the kitchen cannot deliver.
