A chip muffin and bacon and egg soda - menu items well known in parts of the UK, but not to the AI which made this

Just Eat has apologised after it was ridiculed online over a series of mistakes with AI-generated pictures for some of its restaurants' food items.

The online food delivery platform had been testing out the tech to showcase food which didn't have images yet - but not all turned out as planned.

Instead the AI invented several bizarre concoctions, from bacon and eggs floating in a glass of cola - a confusion between "soda" and "soda bread" - to chips poking out of muffins.

A Just Eat spokesperson said the firm was "in the process of removing" the incorrect images, and would stop making more until the AI was further developed.

Salt and pepper chips usually involves frying chips with onions, garlic and chillies - a little bit more exciting than this suggests

"We work with tens of thousands of small restaurants on their food imagery, including funding professional local photographers," the spokesperson told the BBC.

"We've been trialling AI-enhanced images, and as with any new technology, it isn't always quite right the first time."

What some parts of Manchester call a "chip muffin" - also known as a chip butty - causing the AI to invent a dish which seemingly involved baking potato into bread

The incident highlights the difficulties companies can still face when using AI to speed up or simplify work processes, especially when it is used to interpret words in a specific context.

Members of the Just Eat UK subreddit have flocked to the site over the past few days to post the latest unintentionally hilarious spins on takeaway food items.

Any picture generated using AI on the delivery app appears with a label indicating so, and the BBC has spotted many of the more unusual takes still up on menus.

A "cheese roll" was inexplicably turned into sushi

A Belfast cafe, meanwhile, had its bacon and egg soda bread dish represented as a glass of fizzy drink with a cooked egg and bacon floating in it.

Spelling mistakes on menu items have sometimes added to the confusion, with the Instagram account @uknewestfoods posting a picture of garlic bread in the shape of a plane - presumably because of a misspelling of the word "plain".

This article contains content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. You may want to read Meta's Instagram cookie policy , external and privacy policy , external before accepting. To view this content choose ‘accept and continue' .

Meanwhile, a "cheese roll" - bread and cheese - instead became slabs of cheese rolled into a sushi roll.

While some on social media said they found the images "hilarious", another was less interested in the AI-generated dishes, saying: "Well, that lot just helped my diet".

Meanwhile, one person on Instagram , external questioned why customers would ever want to see AI images of a restaurant's food even if they were closer to the real thing.

"I want to see what the dish actually looks like as it helps me decide who to order from or what to order," they said.

"These 'perfect' AI versions just lead to disappointment if that's what you think your meal will look like."

The Jackdaw gas platform and drilling rig in the North Sea.

After a half-century wait, the United Kingdom now has an oil fund.

Chancellor John Healey announced the creation of an Energy Wealth Fund at the Jackdaw gas approval announcement on Wednesday, with £2bn of funding housed in the National Wealth Fund.

A selection of energy exporting countries, mainly in the Gulf, but also including Norway, over the years have amassed multi-trillion funds using oil and gas revenues to create epic national piggy banks.

It has been a long-standing debate in UK economic policy circles. If neighbouring Norway has amassed a $2.4tn war chest from the same North Sea, where exactly did the UK's sovereign wealth fund go?

It is an apposite question on the week when the national debt also hit £3tn for the first time.

"The proceeds of this oil and gas coming ashore now can be invested for the future generations," the chancellor said.

"If we had done this when North Sea oil was first discovered in the 1980s, we'd have a British Sovereign Wealth Fund now that would be worth probably a trillion pounds."

On Wednesday, for the first time, Treasury officials actually calculated how much that missing British fund could have been worth.

The trillion pound number comes from internal Treasury modelling. The assumption was that the UK's historical North Sea receipts of £200bn had been invested, with no withdrawals and grown at a rate comparable to Norway's.

"Norway demonstrates the power of long-term investment: the government wants to learn from that principle, rather than copy its model wholesale," one insider told me.

It was a "missed opportunity" which "had we systematically invested those receipts, we could have built a huge national asset for future generations", they said.

Burnham defends Jackdaw decision as Badenoch urges PM to overturn ban on new oil and gas licences

It is a giant "What if?" asked often by economists critical of the Margaret Thatcher era.

The peak oil revenues were, in their view, frittered away in pre-election tax cuts, which ended up being spent on 1980s garden conservatories.

Others might argue that the revenues under subsequent governments were squandered on wasteful government spending. It is worth noting that Norway's fund only began in earnest in 1996.

The idea of a lost oil fund has also featured in arguments from supporters of Scottish independence, and was suggested by some government advisers in the 1970s.

I have met some of the officials running Norway's fund. They are sometimes lambasted by ordinary Norwegians on the Oslo commuter trains who can all check the live value of the national fund.

Three percent of its value is drawn down each year to fund a fifth to a quarter of government budgets. The nation drew down on the fund during the coronavirus pandemic.

It is meant to help fund Norway's post oil economy and society, as indeed are some of the equivalent funds in the Gulf. It is a gift to the future.

While the UK government promises to divert new revenues into its new fund, it will be run rather differently. Norway's fund is obliged to invest abroad, and has grown hugely off the back off investments in US big tech. The UK plan is to create a fund that can invest domestically in green energy. It may struggle to match the performance.

UK energy tax revenues are also forecast to dwindle as North Sea production slows. The rate of slowing may now ease, with Jackdaw and extensions to existing fields. Critically Norway's state still controls its oil companies, also giving a share of their profits.

Two billion Norwegian Kroner was exactly the starting investment in Norway's fund 30 years ago. It is now worth over a thousand times that.

Nobody expects the Energy Wealth Fund's £2bn to be worth £2tn by 2056. The question is: what might have been, had a similar, far-sighted idea been adopted here in decades past?

How much gas could Jackdaw provide? And will it cut your energy bills?

Hepatitis B study in Guinea-Bissau that was to be funded by CDC and that drew global backlash ‘will not move forward'

The US-backed hepatitis B vaccine trial in African newborns that drew global backlash was halted, the lead researcher said on Wednesday.

It was "now clear" that the study "will not move forward in Guinea-Bissau", Frederik Schaltz-Buchholzer, a Danish researcher, wrote on LinkedIn, adding, "we were not given the necessary governmental approval."

The minister of health in Guinea-Bissau, Quinhin Nantote, previously denied that the project would move forward. "This is not even remotely true," Nantote told the Guardian in Portuguese last week.

The study was to be funded with $1.6m from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with another $1.6m from private partners like the Bill Ackman-backed Pershing Square Foundation and the Bluebell Foundation.

"The solution is clear here: take the money and vaccinate as many kids as you can," said Paul Offit, a vaccines expert at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, who sharply criticized the proposed study as unethical.

The government of Guinea-Bissau now has control over the researchers' vaccines, which they apprehended when they searched the offices of the Bandim Health Project on Monday.

It was vital to support Guinea-Bissau in rolling the immunizations out to all newborns as soon as possible, Offit said. Guinea-Bissau currently plans to offer the universal birth dose in 2028.

The Danish researchers, led by Schaltz-Buchholzer, Christine Stabell Benn and Peter Aaby, hypothesized giving live vaccines, like the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG), may have an overall mortality benefit beyond simply preventing illnesses like tuberculosis – but giving another vaccine like hepatitis B alongside it could dampen that effect.

Such a hypothesis was "fanciful" because the hepatitis B vaccine is a single protein among billions encountered by the immune system each day, Offit said.

"There's no evidence for that, and it doesn't make biological sense," he continued. He also added that there was a very clear benefit to giving the vaccine to babies as soon as possible, because of high rates of hepatitis B in the country and the possibility of lifelong illness and death from infection.

The Danish researchers did not respond by press time to questions about the study or to this criticism. The CDC did not respond by press time to questions about whether the funding, which was appropriated through its global health work, would now be used to roll out the vaccine to all newborns in Guinea-Bissau, as recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

"WHO recommends that all infants receive a first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine as soon as possible after birth – preferably within 24 hours – followed by at least two additional doses," said Tarik Jašarević, a WHO spokesperson. "WHO remains committed to working with national authorities, researchers, and partners to ensure that all newborns – in Guinea‑Bissau and worldwide – receive timely, evidence‑based protection against hepatitis B."

Those who declined participation in the study would not have received the vaccines – making true informed consent impossible, experts say.

"Imagine you're a mother. You want to do the best for your child," said Henrik Støvring, a Danish researcher who has co-published research raising questions about previous research from the Bandim project.

"If they decide to participate in the trial, they have a 50% chance of getting the vaccine for their children. But if they stay out, they have a 0% chance of getting the vaccine. So how can you say that's a non-coercive informed consent?" Støvring asked.

The proposed trial led to distrust among Bissau-Guineans, who wondered if the vaccine – which has a decades-long record of being safe and effective – was being tested on Africans because it was dangerous, Schaltz-Buchholzer said in his post.

It "should be clear" that both birth vaccination schedules – with or without hepatitis B – are not "dangerous to anyone", he wrote. There is a clear benefit to giving hepatitis B vaccines at birth, and not doing so can lead to lifelong danger, experts say.

Conducting a study like this "makes the case that there's something that's worthy of study, for which they have no evidence", Offit said.

"We have millions and millions, arguably hundreds of millions, of children in this world who have gotten that vaccine as a birth dose or haven't. If there was any evidence that this was problematic, you would know this by now," Offit added. "We eliminated hepatitis B in the United States in children virtually within years of starting that program, so the benefits are clear."

Schaltz-Buchholzer also cast doubt on the effectiveness and safety of the hepatitis B vaccine at birth, noting that he believes the study was canceled because it challenges "prevailing medical assumptions, such as that HBV0 does not have non-specific effects". The study, in addition to looking at mortality, would have also examined side-effects such as skin conditions and neurodevelopmental conditions. Dozens of studies have shown no link between vaccination and autism.

"All newborns should be given a birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine," Offit said. "Guinea-Bissau is a country that suffers a high incidence of chronic hepatitis B. That country, more than any other country, arguably, needs to launch this program."