Waiter, there’s an AI in my soup.
Artificial intelligence has been used to carry out increasingly sophisticated frauds, from financial aid schemes to impersonating loved ones to demanding money via voice scammers.
Now, food courier services are reporting a spike in scammers employing generative AI to make their food orders appear undercooked or bug-ridden so they can score a free meal from Uber Eats, DoorDash and other food delivery companies.
Doctored food photos have entailed everything from melted cakes to superimposed flies on their pastry, showcasing AI’s uncanny ability to reproduce convincing photographic evidence, the Times of London reported.
The Post reached out to DoorDash and Uber Eats for comment.
And the perpetrators are none too shy about their food frauds.
“Editing my pictures so I can get my money back on DoorDash,” boasted one culinary counterfeiter on X alongside a composite of a hamburger that they made look dangerously rare via digital voodoo.
In another post on Threads, a bozo detailed how they were able to make a chicken leg look similarly undercooked using Photoshop, prompting the food delivery app support to reportedly apologize for the “inconvenience” and refund them $26.60.
“Photoshopped my food so DoorDash can give me my money back food stamps ain’t coming next month,” they bragged.
They were quickly ripped by commenters with one critic writing, “this is not funny dude WTF.”
“I hope you and others get locked up,” said another. “Not like you are working that hard anyway since you can’t afford $20.”
A third observed, “This is going to hurt the business you ordered from, not DoorDash.”
Indeed, despite the consensus surrounding the morally bankrupt hack — which is illegal in the US and UK — delivery platforms supposedly issue refunds without probing the matter further, generally resulting in the business eating the cost.
The AI refund scheme isn’t just perpetuated by delivery app customers either.
Last month, a DoorDash courier allegedly sent a customer an AI-generated pic of their food as proof that it went to the rightful owner.
While the customer caught wise to the scheme, it could potentially become virtually impossible to tell AI dishes from the real meal.
Recently, scientists found that people can’t tell the difference between human and AI-generated faces without special training, per a dystopian study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.
