MenuGen is an AI concept created by AI expert Andrej Karpathy. It is an app that takes a photo of a restaurant menu and uses artificial intelligence to generate pictures or explanations for the dishes. This helps you instantly know exactly what unfamiliar food looks like before you order.

How MenuGen Works

Karpathy’s original idea was built around the concept of vibe coding—a way of creating apps by just talking to AI instead of writing line-by-line computer code.

MenuGen works in a few simple steps:

  1. Snap a photo: You take a picture of a text-only restaurant menu.
  2. AI reading (OCR): The AI reads the words on the menu and identifies all the dish names.
  3. Picture generation: The AI instantly generates or searches for realistic pictures, nutritional facts, and descriptions of what those foods are.