AI agents can help diners book a table. It can also get them banned

Tables at NYC’s Carbone are scarce, but AI may be able to help. | Photo: Shutterstock

Diners are using AI agents to help nab hard-to-get restaurant reservations, and at least one reservations platform has been cracking down. 

In a widely shared post on X this week, JC Bahr-de Stefano, a principal at a venture capital firm, posted a screenshot of an email from Resy saying that his account had been deactivated for violating the reservation platform’s terms of service. 

Bahr-de Stefano had apparently instructed an AI assistant from a company called Instinct to book a table at New York City hot spot 4 Charles. Resy’s terms of service prohibit unsanctioned bots or autonomous agents from interacting with its system. 

According to Bahr-de Stefano, the Instinct agent was relentless in its hunt for a table, making “roughly 200 API requests per hour, around the clock,” including a burst of 200 to 375 requests around 9 a.m. each morning, when 4 Charles opened its Resy books for the day.

“Nice going Instinct,” Bahr-de Stefano wrote. 

He is not the only restaurantgoer to encounter this problem recently. A couple of weeks earlier, an X user named Brian Distelburger wrote about a similar experience. He’d created an AI agent to scan Resy for openings at his favorite restaurants, and said he woke up one day to a deactivation notice from the company.

“I’ve been an @AmericanExpress Platinum cardholder for 20+ years and Resy member since they launched. None of that mattered,” he wrote. (Resy is owned by American Express.)

Both Bahr-de Stefano and Distelburger said Resy eventually reinstated their accounts. But the former said his days of using an AI agent to get a table are over. “First time=last time,” Bahr-de Stefano wrote.

In a statement, Resy confirmed that it “does not currently permit unapproved third-party bots or agents to independently access or interact with the Resy platform.” It said bots can introduce risk to the platform and give some diners an unfair advantage.

The company said it has long banned automated activity on its site, but declined to say how many accounts have been deactivated because of it. 

It’s not clear just how many consumers are using AI to get an edge on restaurant bookings. But the growing availability of AI-powered coding tools and agents has certainly made it easier to do.  

In an X post on Tuesday, Resy founder Ben Leventhal wrote that “10,000 vibe coders have written Resy sniper bots and Instinct [obviously] has shipped their version, too,” highlighting the low barrier of entry into the world of AI-assisted restaurant bookings.

It comes amid rising consumer frustration over the difficulty of getting a reservation these days. Reservation platforms are increasingly making exclusive deals with restaurants, meaning certain spots are available only on certain booking sites. Often, blocks of tables are also set aside for loyalty members or people who use certain credit cards, further limiting what’s available to the average diner.

Reservations at trendy restaurants are now so valuable that secondary markets have sprung up for buying and selling them. In late 2024, the state of New York banned these so-called reservations black markets; New Jersey followed suit this past spring. 

Automated AI agents can help customers grab tables at the moment the restaurant releases them, or when someone cancels a reservation. But they also add another layer of competition for non-AI users. And they can slow down service when they are hitting a site repeatedly, as AI agents are designed to do. 

In their terms of service, the three major reservation platforms, Resy, OpenTable, and SevenRooms, all put limits on the use of bots, scrapers, or other automation to interact with their sites.

But they have to walk a fine line. AI tools like these are becoming more mainstream, and therefore a potential source of reservations traffic. So platforms are also taking steps to embrace AI, on their own terms.

OpenTable, for instance, said this week it is integrating with Muse, the new AI agent from Meta that can do things on users’ behalf, like make a restaurant reservation. In response to a question about its agentic AI policy, OpenTable also touted partnerships with ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Alexa+, and Perplexity.

“Diners are searching for restaurants in new ways, with AI-driven discovery growing rapidly,” the company said. “OpenTable’s approach is to meet diners where they are – including across the most-widely used AI platforms – and converting them to book.” 

Resy also integrates with chatbots from ChatGPT and Claude. Diners can search for and book tables on Resy directly within ChatGPT, and can use Claude to find availability before being taken to Resy to complete the reservation. 

The company did not rule out giving access to more agentic tools at some point. 

“As agentic technology evolves, we’ll continue to evaluate opportunities thoughtfully while maintaining the trust and reliability that diners and restaurants expect from Resy,” the company said.

As for how restaurants feel about the rise of AI-mediated reservations, several contacted by Restaurant Business indicated that they weren’t well-versed on the topic. 

But Andrew Rigie, executive director of the New York City Hospitality Alliance, acknowledged that it is something for operators to keep an eye on. 

“As AI agents become integrated into people’s lives, how they interact with restaurants and reservation platforms will evolve,” he said in an email. “It will be an ongoing question for restaurants and reservation platforms to determine how to adapt to, and manage, what may become common consumer behavior.”