That’s chicken “pops,” not “pox.” Indian restaurant’s AI menu makes gnarly error.

A restaurant in India accidentally used AI to describe “Chicken Pops” as a childhood disease with “small, itchy, blister-like bumps,” confusing the appetizer name with chicken pox symptoms. The embarrassing mistake highlights how AI-generated menu descriptions can go spectacularly wrong when algorithms misinterpret dish names, potentially affecting customer perceptions and ordering decisions.

What happened: Royal Roll Express restaurant in Sikar, Rajasthan, displayed a grotesque menu description on Zomato, a food delivery platform, that described their “Chicken Pops” appetizer as “small, itchy, blister-like bumps caused by the varicella-zoster virus” and noted it was “common in childhood.”

The likely culprit: Food delivery platforms increasingly use AI to automatically generate menu descriptions when restaurants don’t provide detailed summaries.

• DoorDash users report similar issues where AI replaces store-provided descriptions with auto-generated ones, sometimes leading to inaccurate dish descriptions.
• Zomato, the India-based delivery service, announced in 2020 that it would digitize physical menus using machine learning “without any human input required.”
• The company recently laid off 600 customer support workers after introducing a new AI chatbot for consumers.

Why this matters: The incident demonstrates how AI integration in the restaurant industry can create confusing and potentially harmful customer experiences.

• Customers may order dishes based on inaccurate AI-generated descriptions that don’t match the actual food.
• While Zomato banned AI-generated images in 2024, no similar restrictions exist for AI-generated menu text.
• The mistake could affect customer trust and ordering decisions on food delivery platforms.

The broader context: This represents a growing pattern of AI failures in everyday applications where algorithms lack sufficient context to make accurate interpretations.

• The AI likely confused “Chicken Pops” with “chicken pox” due to similar spelling and limited contextual understanding.
• Such errors highlight the importance of human oversight in AI-generated content, especially in customer-facing applications.