By Wyatte Grantham-Philips
Ever get your McDonald’s order mixed up at an AI-powered drive-thru? The experiment behind the fast-food giant’s automated order-taker will soon be coming to a close.
McDonald’s confirmed on Monday that it had decided to end a global partnership with IBM, which has been testing this artificial intelligence technology at select McDonald’s drive-thrus in the US since 2021.
The McDonald’s experiment using AI to take drive-thru orders has not been a complete success. Credit: AP
That doesn’t mean you’ll never encounter some sort of chatbot while picking up fries on your ride home again. While the IBM partnership for McDonald’s automated order-taker test is winding down, the Chicago-based fast-food giant suggested it wasn’t ruling out other potential AI drive-thru plans down the road – pointing to “an opportunity to explore voice-ordering solutions more broadly”.
“Our work with IBM has given us the confidence that a voice-ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurants’ future,” McDonald’s said in a statement this week, adding that it would continue evaluations to “make an informed decision on a future voice-ordering solution by the end of the year”.
Numerous fast-food chains have begun exploring the implementation of AI across operations over recent years, with many pointing to possibilities of maximising speed and cutting costs. In the United States, burger chain Wendy’s partnered with Google Cloud to develop “Wendy’s FreshAI” chatbot.
But success for AI-powered drive-thrus has been mixed. McDonald’s automated order-taker with IBM received scores of complaints in recent years, for example – with many customers taking to social media to document the chatbot misunderstanding their orders.
One 2023 TikTok appears to show the drive-thru assistant place order after order of McDonald’s chicken nuggets on one car’s tab, despite the customers asking it to stop while laughing. Additional posts show an array of other mishaps – such as it adding strange extras, such as ice-cream with tomato sauce and butter, or picking up orders from other nearby cars.
Unnamed sources familiar with the project told CNBC that the technology had had difficulty interpreting different accents and dialects, among other challenges affecting order accuracy.
McDonald’s declined to comment about the automated order-taker’s accuracy. In an initial statement, IBM said that “this technology is proven to have some of the most comprehensive capabilities in the industry, fast and accurate in some of the most demanding conditions”, but did not immediately respond to a request for further comment about specifics of potential challenges.
The US tech company said it was “in discussions and pilots” with several other quick-serve restaurant clients interested in the automated order-taker.
According to trade publication Restaurant Business and CNBC, which obtained a memo sent to franchisees last week, the automated order technology will be shut off in McDonald’s locations testing it “no later than July 26, 2024”.
Both IBM and McDonald’s maintained that although their AI drive-thru partnership was ending, the two would continue their relationship on other projects. McDonald’s said it still planned to use many of IBM’s products across its global system.
In December, McDonald’s launched a multi-year partnership with Google Cloud. In addition to moving restaurant computations from servers into the cloud, the partnership is also set to apply generative AI “across a number of key business priorities” in restaurants around the world.
AP
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