Your dinner pics are now starring in Yelp’s next AI production

Yelp is now using AI to turn user-generated content, like photos, videos, and reviews, into short, vertical videos about restaurants, bars, and nightlife venues.

These clips are being rolled out across its iOS app and appear in a TikTok-style scrollable feed.

The feature has been in testing since last year, but it’s now live nationally.

The process relies on a stack of generative AI tools.

OpenAI’s models write the script and assemble the story, ElevenLabs provides the narrator’s voice, and Amazon Transcribe handles captions.

The result is a video that blends together visuals and voiceover to describe a venue’s food, drinks, and atmosphere.

At the moment, business owners can’t preview or get notified when one of these videos is made.

Users also can’t opt out of having their content included.

Videos are only created if there’s enough user-generated content to tell a good story, and only one AI-generated video per business can be live at a time.

Here’s what’s happening:

While the content itself isn’t personalised, Yelp uses signals from your app activity to decide when to show you one.

If a business or user thinks a video is off the mark or inappropriate, it can be reported via the three-dot menu on the video.

Yelp also carries out routine audits of these videos at scale.

This update builds on other AI features the platform has recently introduced, including review summaries and smarter review filters.

Hope your selfie is AI-approved, babe.