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Soon, it might no longer be an employee, but a robot, or rather generative artificial intelligence, taking your order for a burger with fries and a soda? The American fast-food giant Wendy's has decided to shake up the drive-thru experience by testing the technology in partnership with Google Cloud.
Soon, it might no longer be an employee, but a robot, or rather generative artificial intelligence, taking your order for a burger with fries and a soda? The American fast-food giant Wendy's has decided to shake up the drive-thru experience by testing the technology in partnership with Google Cloud.
From performing a medical diagnosis, creating images digitally, providing summaries of long reports, thinking up itineraries for travel agents or giving fashion advice to find an outfit in line with your tastes and preferred materials, AI seems to be finding all kinds of uses. While the data collection aspect of generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT raises serious questions -- the European Union is currently working on a draft regulation that is supposed to be finalized by early 2024 while the Cyberspace Administration of China recently published a draft regulation to promote the reliable development of AI tools -- that hasn't stopped people pondering the usefulness of these new tools. In fact, any field could potentially benefit from AI, it seems. It could even find its place as part of a company's business model.
Bringing AI to the fast-food industry
This is the case in the fast-food sector. And here, the use of AI is not new. Since 2020, American restaurant chain White Castle \-- famous for its square burgers -- uses robotic arms that can cook a patty without human intervention and know when to flip a burger. With the deployment of generative artificial intelligence -- a new generation of AI that generates content from a model created through a sum of data -- things are moving to the next level, which could make taking orders at the drive-thru more efficient (while also doing away with a human worker). In the United States, the fast-food restaurant chain Wendy's has announced the trial of a technology developed in collaboration with Google Cloud. Code name: Wendy's FreshAI. The whole point of AI for this burger giant is to deal with the customization of orders. Who hasn't asked for the removal of pickles or the addition of bacon to their stack? According to the company, there are billions of possible combinations when ordering from the Wendy's menu, which can currently lead to incorrect orders or miscommunication. The trial is scheduled to start in June at a restaurant in Columbus, Ohio.
The objective is evidently to make the teams' work ever more efficient. "Google Cloud's generative AI technology creates a huge opportunity for us to deliver a truly differentiated, faster and frictionless experience for our customers, and allows our employees to continue focusing on making great food and building relationships with fans that keep them coming back time and again," said Todd Penegor, President and CEO of Wendy's in a news release. Indeed, speed is one of the backbones of the fast-food business model.
Serving faster and faster is the ultimate quest of fast-food restaurants. McDonald's, for example, has decided to geolocate customers who place orders in order to serve them as soon as they arrive. Last year, McDonald's also presented a futuristic drive-thru, based in Texas, using a conveyor belt. At Taco Bell, meanwhile, a dumbwaiter system has been used to deliver tacos straight to its customers' hands.
