Bring on the genAI #content
Bring on the genAI #content
Yelp and Toast want to help restaurants create videos, emails, and more.
This week, both Yelp and Toast unveiled new products that use generative AI — that is, artificial intelligence that can create things — for restaurants.
Reviews giant Yelp is testing AI-created videos to describe local businesses. The tech stitches together photos and videos pulled from a restaurant’s Yelp reviews to create a robot-narrated video about the business. It’s a repurposing of user-created content for the TikTok era; a likely response to competing social networks and platforms that also traffic in strong opinions about restaurants. AI can create sharable content without requiring restaurant or creator labor, and per coverage in Fast Company, Yelp believes the videos will encourage users to share more of their own photos and videos.
Separately, payments and point of sale system Toast introduced some AI-powered marketing automation enhancements for restaurants. Among the new features, restaurants on Toast can create marketing campaigns (think: promotional emails) with a few prompts from a restaurant. The bots generate email layouts and text, and a restaurant can regenerate results as often as they like — it’s like contracting with a copywriter minus their pesky invoices1, and the edits are instant.
These bots solve problems… but might create others.
AI-driven products and services are making good on promises to automate time-consuming processes — in these examples, marketing, video production, and email segmentation and creation. In fact, according to recent survey data from The Verge and Vox Media, email is the fastest growing use case for AI. But with generative power comes a caveat: not all content is good content.
The internet has long struggled with a content quality issue, but AI is making it worse by generating a seemingly endless amount of stuff. Per coverage in the Verge last year:
“[Generative AI systems’] output can potentially overrun or outcompete the platforms we rely on for news, information, and entertainment. But the quality of these systems is often poor, and they’re built in a way that is parasitical on the web today.”
Major online platforms are changing the way they work in order to deal with an influx of bad content. In March, Google announced adjustments to its search results to deal with spammy, poor, or otherwise low-quality content designed simply to game search results and generate clicks. And just this week, Instagram reportedly updated its algorithm to prioritize original content over aggregator accounts — some automated — that often repost photos and videos with no credit to creators.
That’s not to say that any content these tech tools generate is universally bad. Conversely, it’s in these platforms’ best interest to make sure the bots work really, really well.
Even in its earliest days, this tech can help restaurants.
A survey conducted by Slang.ai, which sells restaurants its AI-powered voice technology to answer their phones, found that nearly 94 percent of restaurant operators surveyed believe AI will be necessary for them to stay competitive. Over two-thirds say they plan to adopt AI soon; new products from their existing tech partners makes this particularly easy.
Of course, the new tech doesn’t come without concerns — some seem particularly applicable to restaurants. Of note in the same survey, 1 in 4 operators admit they’re worried about a lack of a human touch — perhaps more important to the hospitality business than any other — when adopting AI. Wrapping the tech inside products restaurants know and trust certainly makes it more palatable.
The Simmer, now available on Apple Podcasts:
I have two new podcast episodes to share today:
First, an interview with Alex Sambvani, co-founder and CEO of the aforementioned Slang.ai shares his thoughts on the future of the tech in restaurants.
Then, this week, my co-host Brandon Barton and I interviewed Shake Shack chief financial officer Katie Fogertey in what is my favorite interview yet.
Good news: You can listen in that purple app, too.
What else?
With great power comes great responsibility. A thing that I learned from parenting influencer Dr. Becky is that two things can be true — even if they seem to be diametrically opposed. This applies to the influence of lauded influencer Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports, who’s gone big with his one-bite pizza reviews. His status as pizza-fluencer landed him on the Nation’s Restaurant News Power List this year, which I’ll concede is nominally fair given what he’s done for many small businesses. But… there’s no mention of the accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment he’s faced, nor any mention of the people who say they’ve been harassed by Portnoy’s legions of followers when they dare call out his particular brand of internet fame. (You know the one.) In my opinion, it’s irresponsible to omit this information while giving such recognition.
What would a TikTok ban mean for the food world? The clock is ticking. — Eater
In an earnings report that saw McDonald’s leadership promise more and better value to its U.S. customers, the company says members of its loyalty program spent $6 billion at the chain in the first three months of 2024 — Restaurant Business
Yum Brands, parent of Taco Bell, KFC, and others, said digital ordering accounted for a record 55 percent of systemwide sales in the first quarter. It was the first time digital sales crossed the halfway mark. — Restaurant Dive
Here’s where I admit that as a journalist and sometimes-copywriter, yes, I have my own opinions about this type of tech.