What kind of pizza are you in the mood for? If you’re a customer at select Pizza Hut restaurants in India, you don’t even have to think about it. A new AI-powered scanner can tell just by “looking” at you.

Pizza Hut India has introduced a groundbreaking pizza mood detector as part of its Your Mood, Your Pizza campaign. According to the Hindu Business Line, the device has been installed at Pizza Hut stores in Delhi, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai.

All the customer has to do is stand in front of the device and look into the screen. The mood detector scans the person’s face and performs a speedy analysis based on visual cues—including your facial expression, whether you’re smiling or frowning, eye movements, etc.—then supposedly recommends the right pizza for your state of mind.

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The AI tool reportedly compares the customer’s facial expressions against a database of publicly available images numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

If your mood is upbeat, the mood detector will suggest the Ultimate Tandoori Veggie Pizza or the Dhabe Da Keema. Feeling grumpy? It’s a Nawabi Murg Makhani for you…unless you’re a vegetarian, in which case you’ll crave the Mazedaar Makhani Paneer.

This photo shows an India woman with her hair in a ponytail, standing in front of a large red machine branded as Pizza Hut's mood detector.

Pizza Hut India

OK, we said the tech is “groundbreaking,” but isn’t it really just a marketing gimmick? Don’t you already know what kind of mood you’re in when you order a pizza? And couldn’t you easily fool the AI simply by turning that frown upside down?

Nevertheless, as gimmicks go, this is a clever one, akin to the old fortune-telling machines that used to be found in soda shops and drug stores. And you don’t even have to pay a quarter.

But we know your next question: “What will Pizza Hut India do with my image? Will I turn up as a brain-eating zombie in some AI-generated post-apocalyptic film?” The chain says no; the system only stores facial patterns as numbers and doesn’t actually save the customer’s image.

“At Pizza Hut, we believe that dining is more than just eating—it’s about the entire experience,” said Aanandita Datta, Pizza Hut India’s chief marketing officer. “With our new AI-powered mood detector, we’re taking that experience to the next level by offering personalized recommendations based on our customers’ moods.”

Marketing, Technology