AI to invade hundreds more Taco Bell drive-thrus this year

Yet another fast food franchise thinks it has what it takes to make the AI-powered drive-thru work.

Taco Bell, the pseudo-Mexican restaurant chain, has announced its plan to add "Voice AI technology" to hundreds of its locations by the end of the year. It claims to already have the feature working at over a hundred drive-thrus across 13 states.

With about 8,000 Taco Bells in the US, perhaps one in every ten or so locations could have a drive-thru with Voice AI at this rate. Just as it sounds, the idea is you drive up to a T-Bell, and an AI system will take your order rather than a person. Yo quiero speech recognition.

Alleging that "innovation is ingrained in our DNA at Taco Bell," Dane Matthews, the Crunchwrap Supreme giant's Chief Digital and Technology Officer, claimed AI-powered drive-thrus can take work off real employees' plates and "unlock new and meaningful ways to engage with our customers." Apparently, these chatbots will be able to take orders more accurately, more quickly, and more friendly than human workers.

Five KFC locations in Australia will also be using the Voice AI feature, as Taco Bell and KFC are owned by the same parent company, Yum Brands.

Yum isn't the only fast food monolith to look into AI drive thrus; rival chains Wendy's and McDonald's also jumped aboard the ML hype train, with the former teaming up with Google and the latter with IBM. They, like Taco Bell, have expressed lots of optimism about AI chatbots for drive-thrus, saying that the technology would help speed up orders.

But it's also definitely about money and not having to hire as many workers as before.

AI voice recognition has pitfalls, though, from misunderstanding customers and putting in wrong orders, to potentially running afoul of privacy laws. And, at least for the current generation of ML voice tech, the pros may not outweigh the cons, as McDonald's actually terminated its partnership with IBM and the other month killed its AI drive thrus. The burger slinger says it'll bring back AI drive-thrus, but only in the vague future.

This all doesn't exactly bode well for Taco Bell, but as long as AI remains the dominant buzzword of the day, now might be the best time to see if a cutting-edge chatbot can do better than a person and a headset. ®