AUGUST 19 — I get it. It’s hard to be in the F&B business with the overhead, cash-strapped customers and delivery platforms taking a huge chunk out of your earnings.
When I was very ill, GrabFood kept me fed when I couldn’t even walk without a cane.
Yet now I’m weaning myself off most food delivery services as the price is too hard to justify.
With the marked-up prices, ingredient rationing and cost-cutting, Grab, ShopeeFood and the like are more occasional treats.
Why order my favourite shio pan on a food delivery app when I can walk 15 minutes to a nearby bakery?
Yet I might still be using the apps more often if it wasn’t for the listings being hard to tell apart.
Many stores are using AI-generated pictures for their food so I don’t actually know what I’ll be getting.
I know that even menus can be misleading in restaurants, with that decadent-looking bowl of ramen in the menu turning up on your plate as a mass of stringy noodles, while you play “hunt for the meat.”
At least menus look appetising; the images on Grab are just revolting.
Why are the colours so radioactive?
Why is cheese dripping everywhere on everything and looking like sewer overruns?
Much as we like making fun of “American cheese” for not being real cheese, it still looks better than the terrifying, neon yellow goop in GrabFood ads.
Why would I order something that looks like it came out of the pages of Swamp Thing?
I’m making it a point not to eat anywhere that uses AI imagery pervasively whether on Grab or anywhere else.
There’s a big and popular food chain that has the money to hire artists or photographers for its food but no, they instead use the same radioactive orange/piss-yellow graphics on food listings and even merch.
Despite being criticised for it, the chain does not seem to care so long as the queues remain long (as they were last weekend in a mall I frequent.)
Some days I despair at the constant bombardment and messaging to “adopt AI” but tell me, for what?
Outside of work (my column is 100 per cent written by me, no AI proofreading/brainstorming/editing going on here) where AI summaries are a new tedium, I see no reason to use AI.
A friend of mine, a writer and editor, was recently approached about joining a platform that would let readers use AI to query your book.
What madness is this now?
I do not want to ask ChatGPT about a book while I’m reading it; I have eyes.
Going back to disgusting AI pictures — there needs to be a ban on AI for food advertisements because it’s just outright misleading.
It’s great that I’m saving money by almost never ordering food now, but I fear that at this rate I’ll be going through my own personal AI psychosis from all the hideous graphics that are just everywhere.
Even trying to use DuckDuckGo instead of Google to avoid useless AI search guides has not been great.
I’ve been forced to go back to Google because DuckDuckGo’s search results are full of “dead” sites, created by bots, with articles populated entirely by AI writing.
At least on Thursday I’ll be watching the Chiikawa movie, where I’ll be watching cute, animated mascots try to survive a disaster island scenario.
Before that I’ll make sure to walk to Dou Dou Bake and enjoy the sight and smells of human-made, doughy artistry.
With the haze making even my old cat cough up her lungs, it will be a challenge but nothing a mask can’t sort out.
Now if only I could wear a mask that would make AI food adverts invisible.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
