An artificial intelligence chatbot called "Wendy's FreshAI" will take orders from Wendy's drive-thru customers after the fast food chain partnered with Google Cloud to create the bot.
More than three-quarters of Wendy's customers prefer to place orders via drive-thru, according to a Google Cloud announcement on May 9, with the tech giant claiming that using chatbots to serve these customers will "revolutionize the fast food service industry."
AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT use natural language processing to understand what people are saying, and then use machine learning algorithms to generate responses. Todd Penegor, Wendy's CEO and president, told The Wall Street Journal in a statement that the c hatbot "will be very conservative," adding, "You won't know you're talking to employees. talk to anyone else."
However, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian pointed out that there are a number of challenges with using chatbots to serve drive-thru customers: "You might think driving by and talking into a drive-in would be an easy problem for AI, but it's actually one of the hardest."
The variety in customer orders was a challenge Wendy's and Google Cloud had to overcome, as many customers might call menu items by different names or have special requests. Additionally, chatbots must filter out any background noise.
To help improve the AI chatbot before rolling it out to multiple stores, Wendy's FreshAI will launch a pilot launch at a Columbus, Ohio, restaurant in June. Customers will still have the option to speak with a human. Not everyone was impressed by the anno uncement , with some seeing it as the latest way for companies to "systematically cut jobs", stressing that teenagers and other less skilled people seeking employment will be most affected by the change. Despite AI's enormous potential to improve efficiency, increase productivity ity, and reduce costs Across industries, its unprecedented growth has many concerns that it will lead to a significant decline in employment as AI is used for tasks previously assigned to humans.
