Businesses across the world are looking at how they can use artificial intelligence to work more efficiently. Not every idea is a winner, though, as American fast food chain Taco Bell has discovered.
Taco Bell, which sells Mexican-style fast food, has brought AI-ordering to 500 of its drive-through restaurants since last year. The AI was supposed to make ordering easier while reducing the time people had to wait for their food.
However, customers have been sharing problems with the AI ordering system online. In one video on Instagram, a customer is trying to order a soda only for the AI to keep asking, “And what will you drink with that?”
Others say they’ve had things they don’t want added to their orders, or been charged twice.
Some people don’t want to use the AI system at all. A YouTube video has gone viral in which a man “breaks” the AI by trying to order 18,000 cups of water. He wasn’t especially thirsty — he wanted to make the system connect him to a human worker to take his real order.
His plan worked — because almost immediately after he asks for thousands of cups of water, the AI is replaced by a person.
Other fast food companies have had issues with AI too. McDonald’s has removed it from its drive-throughs because of mistakes. For example, one customer had thousands of dollars worth of chicken nuggets they didn’t ask for included in an order.
But Taco Bell isn’t completely giving up on AI. Instead, the company’s chief digital and technology officer, Dane Mathews, told the The Wall Street Journal that Taco Bell will now think carefully about where it uses AI in the future — and that won’t include drive-throughs!
