Uber Eats adds AI to menus, photos, and reviews

Uber Eats is bringing a new wave of AI-powered features to its food delivery platform, aiming to improve how restaurants communicate with customers — and how dishes are presented online. These updates include generative AI tools to write menu descriptions, enhance food photos, and summarize customer reviews, along with new interactive features like live chat and photo uploads with potential rewards.

AI-Enhanced Menus and Photos

One of the biggest changes is the use of generative AI to craft more appealing descriptions for menu items. Instead of relying on short or generic text written by restaurant staff, AI can now automatically generate rich descriptions that may help sell a dish more effectively. This could be especially useful for smaller businesses that don’t have dedicated marketing support.

Uber Eats is also using AI to improve food photography on the platform. Poor lighting, low resolution, or unappealing framing can hurt a restaurant’s visual appeal — and AI is stepping in to fix that. According to Uber Eats, its tools can adjust lighting, resolution, and even re-plate meals digitally by editing backgrounds, dishware, or expanding the food to fill the frame. While this might make menus look more appetizing, it also raises questions about how accurately these AI-enhanced images represent the actual food customers will receive.

Real Customer Photos and Incentives

To balance out the polished look of AI-generated images, Uber Eats is introducing a new feature that allows customers to upload their own photos of their meals when leaving a review. These images could provide more realistic previews for other users and, in some cases, earn contributors Uber in-app credits if their photo is published.

The program is launching globally, and photos can be uploaded through the “add photos” option when rating an order. While not every photo will be featured, those that are selected could turn your takeout into a small source of rewards.

Summarized Reviews and Live Chat

Another AI tool aims to summarize customer reviews, offering quick insights into common feedback. This feature could help restaurants identify areas for improvement without sifting through hundreds of individual comments.

In addition, Uber Eats is rolling out a new Live Order Chat system that allows restaurants to message customers in real time after an order is placed. This could be used to confirm special requests, address allergies, or offer alternatives when items are unavailable — potentially improving accuracy and customer satisfaction.

What It Means for Customers

These new features are designed to give customers more useful, interactive, and visually engaging information when deciding what to order. User-uploaded photos and live chat could enhance transparency and trust, while AI-generated content may add convenience — though it remains to be seen how authentic and reliable these enhancements will be.

As Uber Eats leans further into AI and crowdsourced content, the dining experience may begin to reflect a more curated, interactive model — one that blends automation with human input to create a richer digital food court.