Time Out, a city life and culture guide website, recently introduced a new map website called “LooksMapping” to curious New Yorkers. Unlike typical restaurant review platforms, LooksMapping does not evaluate dishes or services. Instead, it utilizes artificial intelligence to scan over 10 million Google Maps customer photos and assigns each of the nearly ten thousand New York City restaurants an average “attractiveness score” (ranging from 1 to 10) based on the customers’ “looks”.
Created by 22-year-old programmer and satirical creator Riley Walz from San Francisco, this innovative interactive hotspot map features red markers indicating places with “model-level” attractiveness and blue markers representing more “ordinary” dining spots. For instance, the beloved Fanelli Cafe in SoHo received a modest 4.1, while Thai 55 in the West Village was awarded a perfect 10, with customers’ attractiveness scores off the charts.
The top five New York restaurants with the highest customer attractiveness scores on the map are Ubani Midtown (Midtown East), Shinn WEST (Hell’s Kitchen), KYU NYC (NoHo), Aroy Dee Thai Kitchen (Financial District), and Thai 55 Carmine (West Village).
Ranking restaurants based on “looks” may sound absurd, but this is exactly the intention behind the website. Its homepage humbly states, “This site simply digitizes the shallow judgments we make every day in an even shallower way, serving as a mirror reflecting collective vanity.” Creator Walz also admits that the algorithm can be “a bit unreliable”, as it tends to prefer wedding photos over blurry selfies.