Someone said to me recently that I should put more of The Bristol Sauce’s content behind a paywall, but I am reluctant to do so. I want everyone to be able to access useful and entertaining writing on Bristol’s restaurant scene. The more people choosing to pay, the more viable that becomes. Those paying pay so that others who can’t afford to, or simply don’t want to, can read for free. It’s a lovely system and it means that our writers are paid for their work and our editor (me) can hope of one day being paid for her work, too. It keeps our content free from the whims of advertising and means we have complete control over the content. Our only loyalty is to you. If you can afford to contribute, please do so by becoming a paying Saucer. Thank you!

I have been a victim of Reddit many times. I’ve been berated and humbled for having the audacity to ask what I thought was a perfectly innocent question, such as ‘why isn’t my dishwasher working?’ or ‘which restaurant in Bristol would you like to read a review of?’

Yet like some masochist, I keep going back. When I tire of whatever nonsense reels the algorithm has decided to prescribe me and my allocated personality this week (the interiors of tiny homes, most recently), it is to the Reddit app I turn. To me, it feels like one of the last true-to-itself corners of the internet.

It was on Reddit that I came across the following.

This led me to all sorts of existential questions, like: what is cow equals cow equals cow? What words can I find when the letters are made up? What moo does match?!

The destination-less cow maze sums it all up. Where exactly are we heading? For anyone that can’t be bothered to study the above text in great detail, it’s an AI-generated children’s ‘menu’ (read: activity sheet, because it doesn’t contain a single menu item) from Gloucester Road pub The Crafty Cow, which makes absolutely no sense. Those poor children. I mean it’s a Greene King, so we mustn’t expect much. But it illustrates a wider problem: that AI is being used ever more frequently in hospitality, and not always successfully.

Most visibly, AI is being used to design menus and promotional posters, social media graphics, A-boards and flyers, and it’s deeply off-putting. You’ve probably seen one and they all look uncannily similar. The food doesn’t look real, nor does it look nice, and it leads me to one conclusion — if you can’t be bothered to take a picture of the food you’re serving, or it doesn’t look good enough, then why would I order it?

If I were less clued up and spent less time obsessively consuming food media, I might even be convinced that the AI photo is the real thing, and then be sorely disappointed when the actual version I’m served looks nothing like it. No restaurant using AI-generated food images is setting themselves up for long-term success.

Most hospitality businesses don’t have the money to pay for a graphic designer — and amidst the thousands of other things they have to pay for, I imagine it’s fairly far down the list of priorities and rightly so. But AI is not the silver bullet some think it is. It’s inauthentic, unrealistic and frankly weird to look at. I’d much rather see something overtly homemade that shows a bit of care, like the brilliant Picky Bits posters.

Admittedly, whoever makes the Picky Bits posters has a fair bit of artistic flair. But even handwriting on a plain page is preferable to something AI-generated

I’d rather see no image at all than one that’s been AI-generated. Leave me to imagine the finer details — that’s fine. Or take a photo of something that is imperfect; it’s food, after all, it’s not always going to be gloriously aesthetic.

I’d rather unfiltered reality than AI photos

I suspect we are going to see more and more of this over the coming months and years. Social media has already meant that the same dishes end up on restaurant menus across the country, leading to restaurant convergence. Now we are going to see promotional convergence too; images that all look eerily similar to promote dishes that have been doing the rounds on Instagram.

Just like the maze, the end-game here doesn’t lead anywhere good. Moo + moo = me not coming to your restaurant. In the age of AI, imperfection is the goal, and a human touch tastes far sweeter.

All words and photos by Meg Houghton-Gilmour

Do you have a bone to pick with Bristol’s food scene? Get in touch.

The Bristol Sauce is an AI free publication — all our work is written and edited by humans.

Find Bristol’s best restaurants on the go with The Bristol Sauce app — available exclusively to paying Saucers.

A Bone To Pick: Your AI poster tastes bitter