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.
The problem is that they are just slapping a general use AI onto this and trying to call it a day. Had they created a completely custom model using exclusively recordings of drive-thru interactions it probably would have gone just fine
Unfortunately this is possible.
I think it’s for the better that companies are having these blunders though. It’ll generate some amount of pushback and keep AI from taking over workplaces.