Will customers of fast food restaurants soon be ordering their burgers from a robot? The US chain McDonald’s now wants to take the next step after a test run. Competitors are also experimenting with the technology.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) is also increasingly being tested in the catering industry. For around two years, the fast-food chain McDonald’s has been testing the use of AI for orders at more than 100 locations. This test run will be terminated, the trade publication “Restaurant Business” reported at the weekend, citing a message to the restaurants.
However, McDonald’s made it clear that the step, which was tested together with the computer company IBM, was not the end. After the test experience, the company is convinced “that a solution for voice ordering in the drive-thru will be part of the future of our restaurants,” the US company emphasized to “Restaurant Business”.
Manageable vocabulary
McDonald’s wants to decide on a technical solution by the end of the year. AI language models are getting better and better at having conversations with people.
Speech recognition is particularly suitable for orders in the catering industry, as the choice of words is comparatively manageable. So-called generative AI – as used in the chatbot ChatGPT, for example – can already formulate sentences at the linguistic level of a human.
In December, McDonald’s entered into a partnership with Google focused on the use of generative AI, although the details of the deal are not yet clear. Competitors such as the fast-food chains Wendy’s and Carl’s Jr. are also already experimenting with the automated acceptance of spoken orders.