As McDonald’s has begun to embrace automation and AI for streamlining processes manual workers would otherwise do, it suffered a setback more recently when it made the decision to remove artificial intelligence (AI) powered technology from its drive through restaurants.
In a joint statement put out by McDonalds and IBM in 2021, who was powering the Automated Order Taking (AOT) technology, the fast food giant said the agreement would accelerate its efforts to provide convenient customer experiences. As part of the agreement, IBM acquired McD Tech Labs, which at the time of the announcement was explained would complement IBM’s work in driving forward “AI-driven customer care solutions”.
This technology was rolled out across hundreds of restaurants. However, McDonald’s has made the decision to remove the technology after experiencing difficulties with customers receiving the wrong orders – including hundreds of dollars’ worth of chicken nuggets.
Restaurant Business, which obtained a copy of the email sent out to franchisees making the announcement, was first to report the story.
In a statement in the email, the company said: “While there have been successes to date, we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly. After a thoughtful review, McDonald’s has decided to end our current partnership with IBM on AOT and the technology will be shut off in all restaurants currently testing it no later than July 26, 2024.”
In its statement, IBM remained in support of using AI, as it said: “This technology is proven to have some of the most comprehensive capabilities in the industry, fast and accurate in some of the most demanding conditions.
“While McDonald’s is reevaluating and refining its plans for AOT, we look forward to continuing to work with them on a variety of other projects.”
There’s plenty of other editorial on our sister site, Electronic Specifier! Or you can always join in the conversation by commenting below or visiting our LinkedIn page.
