Biryani with aloo. Kosha mangsho. Egg kathi rolls. Jhal muri. Mishti doi. These are just some of the dishes that come to mind when one thinks of Kolkata — but apparently not if you ask Zomato AI. A former Zomato employee has called out the company’s AI chatbot for suggesting Mexican wraps when asked to recommend classic Kolkata delicacies.
Arnav Gupta yesterday shared a screenshot of his conversation with the Zomato AI where he asked the chatbot for “Kolkata special fast foods like egg rolls”.
Instead of suggesting iconic Kolkata dishes, the chatbot asked Gupta to try “Mexican Zappi Wrap”.
“Waste of compute”
“Arnav, if you're craving those iconic Kolkata-style bites, Chatar Patar is a great pick for dinner. Since you're looking for Puchka, their Masala Puchka and various Zappi Wraps offer that authentic fast-food experience you're after with a solid 47 healthy score,” Zomato AI replied.
Gupta, currently a Meta employee who earlier worked as Engineering Head, Consumer App for Zomato, shared a screenshot of the exchange on X. Criticising the AI offering in no uncertain terms, he claimed that Zomato founder and former CEO Deepinder Goyal would never have approved such a product.
“Zomato AI is absolute dogs***. Waste of compute,” Gupta wrote on X.
{{/usCountry}}“Zomato AI is absolute dogs***. Waste of compute,” Gupta wrote on X.
{{/usCountry}}“As some people say about Apple products ‘Jobs would have never launched this’. This very much feels like something Deepi would not have signed off on,” he added.
HT.com has reached out to Zomato for a statement. This copy will be updated if and when the company responds.
Zomato techie responds
The post led to some amused replies on X.
“Did you try asking it to write a program? If it does, then it's not a total waste of compute,” one X user suggested.
“There is no such thing as waste of compute. Wait for a few weeks and you'll see massively 'learnt' improvements,” another replied.
“This, and customer support also. I tried connecting with a human cuz my delivery status wasn’t getting updated and had been over 1hr, decided to chuck it, drive to the restaurant and pick up the order,” a third person added.
The post also reached Jatin Katyal, Senior Site Reliability Engineer at Zomato. He agreed that the chatbot needed improvements.
“Getting this escalated to the team, agreed this should be better,” Katyal said.
(Also read: Zomato shares five ‘AI hacks’ that you should definitely know about. See LinkedIn post)
Zomato AI is an AI-powered foodie companion designed to help users decide what to order based on their food preferences, dietary needs and even their mood. It can recommend dishes and restaurants, answer questions such as what to eat when hungover or find high-protein, low-carb options, while allowing users to interact with it through natural, real-time texting.