I Will Replace You With Machines - Episode 73

Back in April, during a whole hog barbecue scouting trip through South Carolina, I stopped off at the classic Scott’s BBQ in Hemingway to see how things were going.

The restaurant had closed down for a couple of months at the beginning of 2024 after Ella Jane Scott (Rodney Scott’s mother and a fixture behind the counter) passed away. It reopened in May of last year under the ownership of Sam Wilson, Ella’s brother, and Dominic Scott, Rodney’ son. I was curious to see whether much had changed.

Fortunately, not much has, and I posted about it on Instagram.

Later, while responding to a few of the comments, I noticed Meta had put a little link on the screen with a magnifying glass and the label “Scott’s BBQ review.” Curious at what the heck it meant, I clicked the link, and was taken to this restaurant “review” written by Meta AI.

This review, we might say, leaves a little bit to be desired, starting with the fact that it conflates two restaurants that are both named Scott’s Barbecue, and neither of them are the one I visited in Hemingway, SC.

I have been to both of those other Scott’s, by the way, and both are delicious!

B. E. Scott Bar-B-Que in Lexington, TN, not Hemingway, SC (Robert F. Moss)

Scott's Barbecue in Cochran, GA, not Hemingway, SC (Robert F. Moss)

And what about those pictures underneath Meta AI’s “review”:

Scott's in Hemingway, a platter from Rodney Scott's in Charleston, and random crap gathered by AI

One is the picture I took of Scott’s in Hemingway, and another is an oversead shot taken at Rodney Scott’s Barbecue in Charleston—so close, but no cigar! The enthusiastic gentleman in the upper right is Tim Shropshire, a comedian and Instagram influencer with over 420,000 followers and a penchant for making videos of himself eating barbecue. In that video he’s chomping into a smoked lamb chop at Corner Boys Barbecue, a food truck in Raleigh. I have no idea what that has to do with any of the three Scott’s Barbecue, but the video does have 1.3 million views so it must be important.

To be fair, if you don’t like that particular review, you can always go back, re-click the link, and have the AI bot take another crack at it. In one iteration, the reviewer correctly identified the Scott’s in question as being located in Hemingway, though in successive ones it added that there was a second location in Lexington, Tennessee. Based upon some of the photos served up with the “review”, it seems that Scott’s also serves serves smoked chicken wings and bowls of shrimp and grits.

But forget all that. AI-generated content is clearly the way of the future, and we all need to accept that fact, embrace the miraculous technology, and swallow whatever it feeds us.

But wait, there’s more.

I just went back as I was reviewing this post for the Cue Sheet to see whether Meta’s AI reviewer had gotten any better. It seems, though, that so many other publications Instagram is giving up on restaurant reviews. Instead, the AI scribbler has been redirected toward recipe-writing, for now when I view the comments on my old Scott’s Hemingway post there’s a link to “Search - Whole Hog BBQ recipes.”

I did, and here’s Meta AI’s best stab at one:

So mark your calendar. Next week end I’m firing up the Weber kettle and cooking an orange-garlic injected whole hog finished with herbs de Provence, just like they do in the Pee Dee. I’ll probably put it on right at 6:00 am, so drop by around noon and prepare to be wowed.

Nice work, Zuck.