The AI Restaurant Critic

A technological taste test

A little while ago I wrote a piece speculating that, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the journalistic profession was threatened with redundancy, except the restaurant critic whose job should be safe:

It would seem I may have spoken too soon.

Well-known UK restaurant critic Jay Rayner has been trying out Open AI’s “GPT Chat” with slightly alarming results. His article in “The Observer” is below, and makes an entertaining read-

Jay is loved here for his amusing and sometimes acerbic reviews of fairly upmarket dining establishments, that many of us enjoy for the vicarious pleasure of reading about the failings or occasional successes, of restaurants best afforded by a critic who is not paying the bill himself.

Jay came across an online review of a Chinese buffet restaurant in Skegness, a seaside resort in the North East, which for those lucky enough to be unfamiliar, is best described as disfigured by multiple amusement arcades, bingo halls, chip shops and associated tat, a nice place to come from, though not necessarily to visit.

The review was written by AI in his style, using prompts from an IT enthusiast, who asked it to critique the venue (which he has never been to), and states that he–

“……..hadn’t “seen such a depressing display of Asian-fusion food since I was caught in a monsoon in the Himalayas…..The dining room was a low-lit, faux-oriental den of off-pink walls and glittering papier-mâché dragons; the air was thick with a miasma of MSG and regret.”

To give the bot a bonus, it is a remarkably good electronic emulation of Jay’s style and humour. Jay tried out the technology himself, asking it to review a different, more up-market restaurant that he has been to, and it again came up with a quite stylish review.

However since GPT is not linked up to live data, it described dishes which are not on the menu, a feature of AI sometimes euphemistically called an “hallucination”, ie. it made it up. Presumably Google’s offering “Bard” might do better since it is linked to live data, and could draw on information from the current menu.

Of course in reality a robot cannot yet really sample food (yet!), or witness the standard of service, so the role of restaurant critic retains one of the safest jobs in journalism. However it does show the far reaching tentacles of AI and implications for the whole profession. While a bot could write a fake review, and save a publication the cost of a meal, it would be just that, a snake-oil simulacrum of an ersatz epicure, so Jay’s rather cushy job is secure for now!

I guess in a similar way, the sport correspendent’s job is safe for the time being, though I can see the advantages of not having to witness my team Forest Green Rovers losing yet again.

Incidentally AI has even reached the pages of another publication I follow, “The Big Issue”, a UK magazine supporting rough sleepers, which asked an art-based Open AI programme to produce a picture of a fictitious homeless person, which it did remarkably well.

It seems that an increasing amount of material now either produced by AI or written about, though I realise this article has fallen into that trap as well!

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Mastadon- you can find me here