image credit:Axiom
By the year’s end, Taco Bell plans to have implemented AI ordering at hundreds of US sites, following two years of testing in a few drive-thrus.
Yum! Brands, parent company of Taco Bell, announced on Wednesday that hundreds of US stores will be using artificial intelligence speech technology in their drive-thrus by the end of this year.
Customers will likely be speaking with a machine instead of a real person when they drive up to a Taco Bell to make their order, thanks to this change.
In an attempt to increase sales and free up staff for other duties, some fast food chains have begun testing out chatbots at their drive-thrus. Taco Bell is just one of them. However, a well-known competitor of Taco Bell’s encountered problems attempting to adopt comparable technology, which led to Taco Bell’s expansion.
Following consumer complaints over the system incorrectly completing orders, McDonald’s said last month that it will be discontinuing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for ordering at over 100 drive-thrus in the United States. Videos surfaced online showing customers’ ludicrous orders generated by McDonald’s artificial intelligence drive-thru system. One client didn’t actually desire nine sweet teas, while another yelled “stop” at the screen as it tallied up twenty-two chicken nugget orders.
It wouldn’t be shocking if AI failed miserably in a drive-thru environment. Artificial intelligence speech recognition systems can be fooled by noisy surroundings, and massive datasets of human speech are required for training the technology to accurately comprehend the entire spectrum of dialects and speech patterns. Being on the receiving end of a malfunctioning AI and wishing you could just speak to a real person is a situation that everyone is familiar with.
Although, Yum! Brands’ chief innovation officer Lawrence Kim assured reporters that his company’s technology, which is now used at 100 Taco Bell stores in 13 states, will not encounter any such problems. He insisted that, on the contrary, technology has improved order accuracy, made workers happy, and reduced wait times at the drive-thru.
Kim stated in an interview, “We are confident that we’ve approached this the right way.” She went on to say that it took two years of testing, getting feedback from employees and customers, and refining the technology to reach this position. Yum! Beyond announcing that digital-first ordering channels now generate $30 billion in sales (about 50% of its overall revenue), Brands did not offer details regarding the gains it claimed to have achieved as a result of the AI ordering.
Despite repeated requests, Kim will not reveal which tech companies Yum! collaborated with to create the AI ordering app.
Comment Template