Yelp using AI to turn your foodie moments into quick restaurant videos

Next time you dive into Yelp to look for restaurants or other places to go, you might see some of your previously posted content turning up in the app’s scrolling home feed.

That’s because Yelp is using AI to stitch together videos made up of users’ photos, footage, and reviews about different places that you might want to visit.

The crowdsourced review site started testing the system last year (you can see it in action in the video at the top of this page), The Verge reported, and now looks set to roll it out more widely.

You’ll be able to try the feature by scrolling through the home feed on Yelp’s app and then tapping on a place that looks appealing. If an AI video is available, it’ll start playing automatically. The video example above features an Italian restaurant called Cesarina. 

It shows, somewhat jarringly, a video clip of a dessert followed by a main dish (isn’t it usually the other way around?), with an AI-generated voiceover offering an introduction to the eatery. The video also suggests checking out the restaurant’s “pasta station” where “skilled hands shape the freshest ingredients into culinary masterpieces.”

Yelp’s AI video combines footage and photos uploaded by users in their reviews of the restaurant, with the AI commentary also drawn from user comments. At the moment, it’s not possible for reviewers to opt-out of having their content included in the AI videos. And if anyone viewing a video finds it offensive or inaccurate, they can easily report it by tapping the three dots at the top right of the display and adding their complaint.

The new feature is a quick and easy way to get an overview of a range of places, and the better the uploaded content, the more chance that it has of appearing in the feed.

For restaurants and other attractions, the videos could lead to an uptick in visitors, so it looks like a win-win for both parties.