Real food only: no AI dishes, no stock photos, no invented reviews

TownReels videos are produced by AI and checked by a person. People hear "AI" and picture a dish that was never cooked, in a room that does not exist. That is the one thing we do not make, and this post is about why.

What the AI does here, and what it does not#

It does read your business profile and your photos, write the concept and the words on screen, decide which photo goes where and for how long, compose the music, and render the file. That is why a batch of four costs what it costs and arrives in days.

It does not generate a dish, a room, a plate, a person, a review, a price or an offer. Everything you see in the video was photographed in your restaurant; everything you read came from your profile.

Why the rule#

The diner who orders what they saw. A video is a promise. When the plate arrives and does not match, the gap becomes a review, and the review outlives the video. A generated plate always looks a little too perfect and a little wrong, and the people who know your food notice first.

It is your name on the post, not ours. Platforms now ask for realistic AI imagery to be labelled, and a food video that needs an "AI-generated" label is a food video people trust less. Yours should never need one.

Reviews are regulated. Since October 2024 the FTC's rule on consumer reviews and testimonials bans fake reviews, including AI-generated ones, with civil penalties attached. A review in a TownReels video is a real review you gave us, copied word for word, with the reviewer's name as written. If the profile does not have it, the video does not say it.

Stock photos are someone else's dish, somewhere else. Local people know what your food looks like. A stock plate is a small lie that the whole neighbourhood can check.

What the checks do, in plain language#

• Every fact in a video, the name, the address, the hours, a price, a date, comes from your profile. The writer cannot add one, and a video that contains a fact the profile does not support is stopped before anyone sees it.
• An offer carries its last day, and an offer that has ended stops the video.
• A dish you named that no photo shows is not generated. The video features what the photos do show, and you get a note listing the photos we were missing (see the six photos).
• A person reads every video before you do.
• Nothing is posted without your approval. Silence is not approval.
• One revision round is included with every video. A mistake that is ours, a wrong price, a typo, a fact we got wrong, is fixed free, always.

What this means for you#

Send real photos, taken in your place, of the food as it leaves the pass. Keep your profile's hours, prices and offers current. That is the whole job on your side. The result is a video a regular would recognise, and a first-timer can trust.