Iran Press/ Sci & Tech: Over the past few years, restaurants from White Castle to Wendy’s have been investing in artificial intelligence tech for drive-thrus. They say it’s a way to ease the burden placed on overworked employees, and a solution to bogged down drive-thrus overwhelmed by a surge of customers.
But customers — and workers — may not be thrilled with the technology, CNN reported.
Frustrated customers have already documented cases of AI getting their orders wrong, and experts warn the noisy drive-thru is a challenging environment for the technology. And AI may swipe hours or even entire jobs away from fast-food workers.
But restaurants are forging ahead, buoyed by the promise of higher sales and faster drive-thrus, whether we like it or not.
A challenging environment
Some fast-food aficionados may not have noticed AI at their drive-thru lanes yet, but since about 2021 chains have been testing out AI tools like automated voice ordering, where an AI rather than a person takes your order at the drive-thru.
These efforts have ramped up recently, with two announcements in May. CKE Restaurants (owner of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.) said it will roll out AI ordering capability more broadly after a successful pilot. Soon after, Wendy’s said it had expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to include an AI ordering tool at the drive-thru. The chain is piloting the program in Columbus, Ohio this month.
Even the suppliers of the tech note the challenges of a fast-food application: “You may think driving by and speaking into a drive-thru is an easy problem for AI, but it’s actually one of the hardest,” Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, told the Wall Street Journal in reference to the collaboration.
Speech recognition technology “is really challenging,” said Christina McAllister, senior analyst at research agency Forrester, who studies the impact of using AI in call centers.
Accents can throw the system off, and “it doesn’t perform particularly well in noisy areas,” she noted. Shouting an order over a car full of kids arguing or friends laughing may confuse the technology and, in turn, annoy the customer.
“One of the things that frustrates customers the most is having to repeat themselves when they shouldn’t have to,” she said. Those customers may end up unleashing their anger at the next employee they see.
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