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.
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