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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.
McDonald's told franchisees it would remove the tech from the more than 100 restaurants it has been testing it in by the end of July, as first reported by trade publication Restaurant Business.
I stopped going to fast food restaurants when they added these dumb AI bots. It barely could function when you wanted to do a simple modification to an order and it basically couldn't answer any questions about the menu you may have. Seemed like seasonal items or promotions were outside of its training data as well.
I stopped when they started charging sit down restaurant prices for food barely higher quality than what prisoners eat.
Taco Bell has entered the chat.
There's a Mexican restaurant near us (not a taqueria but an actual sit-down full service restaurant) that was the same price or cheaper than Taco Bell for years.
and when the menu started rotating so that you would awkwardly stand there waiting for the 10-second window to check out a set of items and then have to wait for it to come back around
This seriously makes me crazy, whoever thought/thinks this makes any sense whatsoever as a menu design is out of their skulls. Please, PLEASE just a simple list of menu items with prices, these flashy changing menus offer nothing but frustration and slow things down.
AI saving lives by failing to sell McRibs was not on my bingo sheet
+1, I also stopped shopping from any market that forces self-checkouts. I waste more time, I scan my own stuff, and for what exactly? So the company can earn more money by kicking out their employees? Why the fuck don't we even get a discount for "working briefly" in their market? Nothing these companies pull off ever benefits the society.
Offering the option is one thing, forcing it down your throat is another.
You know I've had this argument with people so often but yet they're so ignorantly adamant that they are so much more efficient at scanning and packing their own groceries and plus they don't want to talk to anybody. It makes me rage. I really hate the direction that society has taken when it comes to communicating to other human beings. Like we live in a society where we're supposed to be social with each other.
I bet some amount of that was deliberate. Kinda like how they started charging extra for value items "dressed like a mac" when people realized the only real difference between a McDouble dressed like a mac was the central bun and it was much cheaper. So they started charging most of that price difference for a squirt of sauce that replaced a squirt of ketchup because McDoubles were for people too poor to afford a Big Mac, not for people who could afford a Big Mac but thought it was a rip off. At least that's what I remember from the time before I realized McDonald's wasn't ever worth going to. I can't think of a single fast food place with burger patties as pathetic as McDonald's (though I have a feeling the US has other chains competing for that spot).
When you're dealing with a human, they can make customizations that might upset the greedy little piggies at the top that would rather gouge people for any improvements and hate when employees give out freebies even if they cost nothing and generate good will for the business. Hell that might have been the difference between then and now for my willingness to go there at all, as it felt less human and more corporate hellish when they started charging for it.
It doesn't even smell like food. To my shame, I occasionally crave a double quarter-pounder, as awful as I know they are. I usually eat it in the car, but last time, I took it home and left it on the table while I went to the loo, and the smell filling my flat when I came back was not appetising in the least.