Janely Montgomery was enjoying a carnival with her friend near Buffalo, N.Y., when she got hungry and stopped by a halal truck.

The pictures plastered outside the truck made Montgomery feel like she was in an episode of "The Twilight Zone." The names were familiar; the items themselves were both recognizable and somehow wrong.

Particularly unsettling was an image of shawarma. It resembled what Montgomery could only compare to a tortilla roll with chickpeas, and had circular patterns all over it.

"It just looks like what I assume an alien would think that we eat," Montgomery said.

It wasn't the work of an alien. It was artificial intelligence.

Promotional AI-generated food images are popping up everywhere, from takeout menus to deli counters. The technology can offer a quick fix for restaurant owners waiting on commissioned photos, or a cost-efficient alternative to professional marketing materials.

Many of the images are succeeding in drawing attention - but for reasons that have little to do with whetting diners' appetites. On social media, where photos of eerily symmetrical arugula salads and suspiciously shiny noodles have gone viral, they've become a symbol of AI gone wrong.

Photorealistic renderings of shrimp that resemble life preservers and chicken parts with the texture of dinosaur skin have elicited disgust and nausea, with an undercurrent of existential, eldritch horror.

"Those wings look like they were recovered from the reactor core," one user wrote on X.

"It feels like I can almost read the Matrix code in those wings if I look at it cross-eyed hard enough," said another.

AI-powered image generators have evolved since the days when they routinely gave people six fingers or extra feet. But they still have their stumbles. Jory Schossau, an AI researcher, said large language models and the related image generators are "pattern predictors."

When they can't effectively capture patterns and nuance, models rely on general rules-of-thumb understanding, such as "cooked shrimp appear roughly circular and have banded striations," Schossau said. The result: "Shrimp that look like other-worldly fleshy rings."

In some cases, image generators propagate patterns with excessive regularity, triggering trypophobia, a strong aversion to clusters of bumps or holes.

Part of the mystery around the uncanniest AI foodslop is why it exists at all, given the availability of tools capable of producing realistic-looking pictures of many common foods. In a recent test, Schossau asked Google's Nano Banana to make AI photos of mac-n-cheese and shrimp scampi. The results "looked quite believable," he said, speculating that many of the images that have gone viral on social media may have been produced using older models.

AI tools are increasingly commonplace in many industries, but restaurant owners who have turned to the technology have in some cases encountered angry responses.

Lyndsey Lozano, who this year opened a cafe with her husband in San Francisco, used AI to create ads of bacon-egg-and-cheese and pulled-pork sandwiches along with iced drinks to give potential customers a sense of the establishment's offerings.

"People just absolutely went crazy over it," she said. "They did not stand for it, which is silly because, I mean, San Francisco is so tech-forward."

Reddit users savaged the photos: "That coleslaw looks terrible, and all the bread looks like reptile skin," one wrote. Another said: "The focaccia bread is pissing me off." The outside of the cafe was vandalized with graffiti. Lozano and her husband ultimately took the sign down.

While more Americans than ever use AI, opposition to the technology is mounting due to environmental concerns, unemployment fears and warnings about the end of the world.

Peter Tuths, a 36-year-old paralegal, was exploring Washington D.C.'s The Wharf neighborhood when he came across an AI-generated poster parked outside a food stand selling Middle Eastern food.

"It's odd to me how so many of them seem to have the same kind of traits," he said of AI food ads. "They'll have the kind of strange, perfectly repeating patterns in the French fries or the bread often has far too much texture."

But Tuths' disgust also stemmed from complicated feelings about AI. "It just feels like here's a few good uses, here are 100 other uses that are maybe unnecessary and are maybe decreasing quality of life."

The manager of the D.C. food stand said the AI-generated sign was a temporary solution while they waited for higher-quality pictures.

Some restaurant owners make no apologies for their embrace of AI.

Jordan Beau, owner of Daisy's Diner & Bar in Brooklyn, said incorporating AI in his marketing materials has helped him make the most of his budget and bring in younger customers.

Beau said Daisy's advertisements start with images of real food. The restaurant's TikTok videos carry many AI telltales, from ube pancakes slathered in pulsating purple sauce to a three-handed bartender.

"I'm not smart enough to know whether AI is staying around or it's going away," Beau said. "What I'm able to say is AI has been a miraculous tool for us."