NEW DELHI: After several customers complained about artificial intelligence (AI) generated images of food and dishes on Zomato, CEO Deepinder Goyal on Sunday announced plans to remove such images from the platform.

The AI ​​images of the food delivery company’s dishes should make the food more visually appealing and also improve the presentation of the dishes.

However, on the social media platform X.com, Goyal stated that he had “received numerous complaints about these misleading images.”

This not only leads to “a breach of trust between customers and restaurants,” but also to “more refunds and worse customer reviews.”

“At Zomato, we use various forms of AI to make our workflows more efficient. However, we strongly discourage the use of AI when it comes to images of dishes in restaurant menus,” said Goyal.

“We urge our restaurant partners to stop using AI to depict dishes in restaurant menus from now on,” the CEO said, adding that the platform will “actively begin removing such images from menus by the end of this month.”

Last year, Zomato introduced PicNic AI (Picture Nicely AI) – a tool to enhance the visual presentation of food images on its platform – to help restaurant partners enhance their basic food images effortlessly.

Goyal also noted that Zomato will also “stop accepting AI-generated images of dishes (if we can detect them using automation).”

He urged both restaurant owners and internal marketing teams to “stop using AI-generated images for marketing purposes.”

At the same time, he encouraged restaurant partners to invest in real food photography from Zomato for free.

“Restaurant owners – if you haven’t yet invested in real food photos for your menu, please contact our catalog support team to schedule a photo shoot.”

“This is offered to you as a pass-through cost; Zomato does not make any money in this process,” Goyal said.

Meanwhile, the online grocery aggregator recently reported a revenue growth of 74 percent (year-on-year) to Rs 4,206 crore in the first quarter of FY 2025.

It posted an increase of over 126 percent in net profit, reaching Rs. 253 crore in the April-June quarter (Q1 FY25), as against Rs. 2 crore net profit in the same quarter last year.