Decoding AI-Generated Food Images: How to Spot Fake Recipes on Social Media

I share this image in my Instagram Stories today, telling people to be basically be careful of these types of images on Facebook because their scammers and their AI generated images, they’re actually not tested recipes. So to be careful about sharing them cuz they’re scammy and spammy links, but basically saying, you know, it’s because they’re AI generated. They’re not actually tested recipes. Just watch out for them. Try not, don’t click on their links and try not to share them.

It’s the most responded story I’ve ever gotten. So people were asking me, how can you even tell it’s AI? So I thought I would show you guys some samples. I just went on Facebook real quick, pulled a couple, and I’ll show you how I determine that their AI.

This one to start, the one I originally shared, that swirl right there, you can’t do that, y’all. You can’t do that. That tells me that’s fake. Let’s go to the next one. This one has the dead giveaway. If you look right here, there’s a part of a fork and there’s no rest of the fork. And also, let me move myself over there. This one over here has the beginning of the fork and no end of a fork. Usually food bloggers are and food photographers are not gonna put a blob of like whipped cream or whatever that’s supposed to be buttercream or something right there. They’re not gonna really do that cuz it’s blocking the image. So I mean, but the utensils are always a dead giveaway.

This one I saw make the rounds so much. You guys, you can’t pipe Oreos. It looks like tire tracks to me, but you can’t pipe Oreos. So that. No, a dead giveaway for that one. I know y’all probably seen this one. Super fake for obvious reasons. This one was disgusting looking, to be quite honest with you. Looks plastic right there. But right here, this blackberry, also it’s supposed to be blueberry, cream cheese egg rolls based on that description. But that is definitely a Blackberry and it’s like been shaved off and put onto something. But so the combination of this section right here, plus this Blackberry is what told me. So I thought this one was obviously fake, but turns out a lot of people did not. So I figured I would include it based on the comments on the post on Facebook.

But look at the utensils, you guys. Is it a fork? Is it a knife? Who knows? So disregard like the rest of it looking very obviously plasticky. Look, the utensil, like I said, utensils are always dead giveaway.

Now this one, I feel like also there’s somebody’s name down there, so maybe I should cover that. This one I feel like isn’t as obvious, right? It’s not as obvious, but look at how large the Raspberry is for scale. So yeah, there are other indicators in this. But look at the raspberry for scale. Raspberries are tiny. That raspberry is gigantic. Also, it looks super fake over there.

This one. How you gonna roll a banana like that? And we’re back with more Oreo magic, I guess. I don’t even know what we’re gonna call this, but Oreos, no, you can’t pipe Oreos like that. Another swirl situation. Even the best bakers cannot get a swirl like that in just cream cheese. That’s this. No. Another dead giveaway. Look at the utensil. Look at that fork.

This one, I don’t know if you guys will notice right off the bat, this one, I noticed in the comments, a lot of people did not realize that it was, and there was like a lot of shares and stuff. It’s iced and decorated on both ends. How are you doing that? Cakes gotta sit on something. It’s iced and decorated on both ends.

This one is obviously not as, or is also not as obvious. There’s some telltale signs for me personally, but this right here, just to point out to you guys, where’s that coming from?

This side doesn’t have a drizzle. They likely did this edit right here to cover up how it comes from nowhere. This one just looks gross, you guys. It’s supposed to be a rice crispy treat. Cheesecake. Obviously fake. This one. I don’t know if it’s as obvious to you guys too, but this section right here, nope, there are so many comments on this post in particular that I found. And again, this was just me going on Facebook and scrolling.

There were so many comments on this one, people being mad that it didn’t work. First of all, you guys, marshmallows don’t look like that. Second of all, they’re gonna disappear. They’re gonna melt. This one, the way the chocolate chips are facing, this doesn’t even look good. But the texture, the icing or icing, whatever that is supposed to be, and a dead giveaway is normally the fake cookie, another fried marshmallow.

Look at the shape, overall shape. This one. Look how essentially like perfect the raspberries are. If you look at them, oddly perfect. The food just looks fake. This was the profile picture of one of the pages. I feel like that’s obvious. Also, obviously, another. You can’t swirl like this one. Look at the strawberries. And last but not least, I feel like this one overall just looks really fake. But if you look at it, you guys, how would you have nuts inside of this cheesecake and then a layer on top of it, but those nuts don’t have any cheesecake on them. It’s kind of like sometimes you have to think about it like in a from a logical standpoint versus just looking at it as a picture food. But anyway, hope that helps.