McDonald’s is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system, which was developed by IBM and uses voice recognition software to process orders, was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable, however, resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars’ worth of chicken nuggets.
In one video, which has 30,000 views on TikTok, a young woman becomes increasingly exasperated as she attempts to convince the AI that she wants a caramel ice cream, only for it to add multiple stacks of butter to her order.
Lmao didn’t even know you could add butter to something at McDonald’s. If you can’t then it’s even funnier it decided that’s a thing.
Should have gone with the real AI solution: Actually Indian
Wasn’t this just voice recognition for orders? We’ve been doing this for years without it being called AI, but I guess now the marketing people are in charge
A computer: does anything.
Tech journalists: is this AI?
Voice recognition is “AI“*, it even uses the same technical architecture as the most popular applications of AI - Artificial neural networks.
* - depending on the definition of course.
It’s more than voice recognition, since it must also parse a wide variety of sentence structure into a discreet order, as well as answer questions.
Ah yes, give me more companies using AI, trying to replace their employees and then realizing it doesn’t work
How come Walmart gets shit for self checkout but McDonald’s doesn’t get absolutely fucking roasted for Ai
Give me 5000 nuggets and bacon on muh ice cream.
drives away
You can tell the exec who greenlit this was a boomer because they went with IBM.
An AI drive through was always going to be difficult. IBM simply isn’t the company that can do stuff like that anymore, and they haven’t been for decades at this point.
Turns out customers weren’t ordering the McDeadly neurotoxin
I use the app to order then they bring it out to my car. No need to deal with people, fake or not.
Voice recognition vs. Download an app where you can’t make mistakes (and a giant corporation can harvest your data). Hmm, I wonder which mcway mcdonalds will go?
“Will you be using our app today?”
Isn’t this just voice recognition software?
It’s like those self service kiosks they have. The first version was broken most of the time, but they got the bugs worked out and after that those kiosks were everywhere.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to just drop the speakers and make them use mobile apps only?
No, that would involve telling people to use a cellphone in a running car. Massive liability
…which is why I park first at the chain before I order. You right its a liability, but they’re gonna run out of options if they can’t afford someone to run the speaker, be it AI, someone in a call center, or the restaurant.
Why would they not be able to afford someone…? And run out of “options”…?
Bubble burst?
I got my fried shoes but no ketchup!
slaps own cheek
NAW!!
