[mostthingsweb]

Relatedly, has anyone else noticed Doordash now has AI generated descriptions for menu items that the restaurant didn't manually describe? I noticed it while looking at a taco place by us.

For items with menu pictures, it gives a definitive description, e g. "Marinated pork with onions, cilantro, and pineapple, folded in a grilled tortilla. Served with lime wedges and a side of grilled jalapeño and sautéed onion."

For items without pictures, it hedges: "Folded flour tortilla filled with seasoned chicken and melted cheese, typically includes a blend of Mexican cheeses."

Part of me finds it pretty neat, but the other part wonders how long it will last.

[lelandfe]

Autogenerating an ingredients list feels like a risky game to play wrt allergies

At least with an empty description you know that you don’t know

[immibis]

At a previous Hack-n-Tell event someone presented a recipe website which used an LLM to parse a free-text recipe and change it to a numbered list of steps and ingredients list.

All I could think is that this is definitely going to kill someone. Luckily, it seems to be offline now.

[candiddevmike]

Sounds like it will be a tasty lawsuit, especially if it's not disclosed that the description is auto generated. Hopefully they don't kill someone with food allergies.

[jsheard]

It's not just the descriptions, they are also AI generating "photos" of the product.

https://www.404media.co/email/57421524-fd79-4073-b6f2-e7fb17...

[lelandfe]

Gobs of e-commerce apparel companies are now using AI product photos too. My friend works for one such company. It’s outrageous as it’s a complete fabrication of the garment’s fit on a model, how a piece of furniture looks in a space, etc. But it allows retailers to skip a huge cost to sell products, and they can make the models as hot, or diverse as they want - without paying human models a dime, or hiring a photographer, or scouting a location.

Seriously, Google “ai ecommerce photos” - it’s disgusting how these services advertise themselves while cutely sidestepping how clearly fraudulent this is to the customer. Here’s an easy scapegoat from page 1 of the results https://flair.ai/

[JohnFen]

If I notice that product descriptions or photos are generated, I'm simply not buying the product. The same way that if I notice a product photo is photoshopped without AI, I'm not buying the product.

[mostthingsweb]

I hate that so much

[SketchySeaBeast]

It's really funny to use "typically" in a menu item. Am I rolling the dice every time I order that menu item?

[amonith]

Wow, that's insane. Here in Poland product descriptions are legally binding. You can straight up sue if you don't get what the description says in any online store. Pictures are optional though, those you could potentially generate, maybe, not a lawyer.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

Wouldn’t fly in a jurisdiction with actual consumer protections.

[a3n]

Marketer: "But we'll always have the United States."