It's happening: AI chatbot to replace human order-takers at Wendy's drive-thru

[Shawn Knight]

In a nutshell: Your next interaction at the drive-thru could be with an AI chatbot instead of a human order-taker, and you might not even know it. Fast-food giant Wendy's has partnered with Google to trial an artificial intelligence chatbot at one of its restaurants in its home state of Ohio. The chatbot will be trained to understand how customers typically order items from the menu and interact in a natural way.

According to Wendy's Chief Executive Todd Penegor, the test bot will be "very conversational" and some customers might not even realize they aren't talking to a human employee.

Software engineers with Wendy's have been working with the search giant to tweak its large language model for keywords and phrases specific to menu ordering. The company's milkshakes are known as Frosties, for example, but some customers might simply refer to them as a milkshake. Other Wendy's slang including "biggie bag" is also being integrated into the chatbot's vocabulary.

The order-taking chatbot will also have to deal with other variables that are unique to the drive-thru lane, such as background chatter from other people in a vehicle talking, the radio playing, or even loud engines and exhaust tones. Furthermore, customers' indecisiveness will have to be accounted for. How often have you changed your mind midway through the order process?

Kevin Vasconi, Wendy's chief information officer, said early tests have been promising. "It's at least as good as our best customer service representative, and it's probably on average better," he said.

In what should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody, the order-taking chatbot has also been programmed to upsell. It'll routinely ask if you'd like a larger size or be interested in a daily special.

Penegor said the goal of the chatbot is to help reduce long lines from forming in the drive-thru lane, which could prompt some potential customers to go elsewhere. In my experience with most fast food joints, it's not the long lines that turn customers away but rather, the slow pace and incorrect nature in which an order is prepared in the kitchen that's the problem. Other establishments like Chick-fil-A and In-N-Out Burger figured this out long ago and can successfully manage long lines with efficiency.

The Wendy's chatbot rollout will start in June at a company-owned location in Columbus, Ohio.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/98622-happening-ai-chatbot-replace-human-order-takers-wendy.html

 

[DSirius]

I bet that in 1 month after implementation, smart humans will found loopholes to order for free from Wendy's Google AI Chatbot. The contest will be at least funny to follow.

P.S. Please keep us updated with Wendy's Google AI Chatbot news in the following months

 

[Ohnooze]

Just the beginning. Ai is going to create a mess in a lot of ways.

 

[VariableSpike]

So working with the worst chatbot out of all of them, great.....

 

[tommygunz]

At least they don't get mad at you, and it doesn't get tired after working 24/7 365. That being said, I still foresee issues with this project

 

[maxxcool7421]

Good. maybe my order will be right this time.

 

[VitalyT]

And then?

 

[p51d007]

Well, what do you expect?
Can't get people to work, unless you pay UNSKILLED people 15-20 bucks an hour, then they
don't show up, don't do the job correctly, and the food sucks, not to mention paying 10 bucks
or more for a SMALL meal.

 

[DSirius]

Well, what do you expect?
Can't get people to work, unless you pay UNSKILLED people 15-20 bucks an hour, then they
don't show up, don't do the job correctly, and the food sucks, not to mention paying 10 bucks
or more for a SMALL meal.

From what you said here I can say that is correct: "the food sucks, not to mention paying 10 bucks or more for a SMALL meal".
And is hard to get people to work and sell any products which sucks, especially when is about food. Even if you pay them correctly, which corporations do not pay them at all.

 

[Bl00dyMinded]

Everyone wanted $15hr... People never understood companies will always win.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

This is a further continuation of a downward trend of the human intelligence. Getting "AI" chatbots to take over jobs and allowing people to integrate with them will not benefit most people - mainly the ones doing the work to use the AI chatbots in their work. Bigwigs will reap the benefits of more money in their pockets as the rest of society becomes dumber and more dependent on help from those above us.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't chatbots that started it, it was folks learning to avoid human interactions and simply relying on smartphone devices to handle their day to day thinking. People have learned how to not communicate with others, in person or over the phone, in these last 10+ years. Young kids actually have anxiety talking on the phone, break down and cry anxiety. They also don't know how to hold eye contact in conversations and they don't take social cues very well because of their lack of in person interactions. Kids these days just go to their phone, record what they do and post it up on some social media platform, check out the likes/views they generate and read up on comments....

There are stories out there that school aged kids (up through high school) can't read an analog clock and they get anxiety and actually start to panic. If it's not a digital clock, they're screwed!

We are allowing these systems to be our brain these days.
How many people in this day and age can honestly remember someone else's phone number? I can recall every landline number I had growing up as a kid (needed to know your phone by memory so you could call home from a friend's house) and I know my wife's cell, mine, my daughters and my mom's cell number by heart. I used to know easily 3x this many numbers by memory for all my friends and family back then. I'm surprised I even recall as many today as I can, it's too easy to just quickly pick a number from my cell phone and simply push the call button.

The only things that seem important these days are what is at our fingertips right now at this very moment. Some people can't even go without using their phone while they're driving a 2ton vehicle that can easily kill them and others around them. We, as a society, have become dumb and the introduction of this so called AI is just going to make things worse. We're closer and closer to becoming the actual world of the Idiocrasy movie.

 

[Uncle Al]

Will be interesting to see if they are willing to wait out the "learning period" for AI to get used to regional speech differences, problem customers, etc, etc .....

 

[kira setsu]

High chances I still won't get that 2nd sauce I ask for...

 

[Kam7r]

Everyone wanted $15hr... People never understood companies will always win.

at 1st maybe... but only at 1st...

 

[captaincranky]

We, as a society, have become dumb and the introduction of this so called AI is just going to make things worse. We're closer and closer to becoming the actual world of the Idiocrasy movie.

Ah yes, "Idiocracy",an entirely plausible commentary on the US dystopian present. The scary part is, all we older folks have to do is look out the front door, or at the TV, to see our accelerating descent into its chaos..

Some other tomes on the topic which should be referred to from time to time would be, "Network" (1976), "A Clockwork Orange" (1972), and for the "faithful", "Dogma" 1999. (Side bar: If Jane Fonda's resurgence at 80+ doesn't interest you, there's always "Barbarella", (1968), with a young, "Hanoi Jane", at her most nubile prime).

More to the point, I think that a $15.00 minimum wage will finally come to pass. But only after after robots take over the fast food cooking duties, chatbots take over the orders, cash is outlawed, and electronic banking is fully implemented. So, at Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, or wherever, there will be a $15.00 minimum wage. The bad news is, there will only be 1 or 2 positions available for humans. (If that).

Who knows, at some point, maybe they'll be able to 3D print "Big Macs".

 

[BuckarooBonzaii]

Decades ago people complained about immigrants taking jobs away but these were jobs that people didn't want to do. Fast forward to the future, the new immigrant called AI.

 

[Aus spot]

At least they don't get mad at you, and it doesn't get tired after working 24/7 365. That being said, I still foresee issues with this project

Don’t get mad? Here’s two ways they will.

1. They are programmed to. Had this experience with a government chatbot thing over the phone and swore at its incompetence trying to get a human. It disconnected me, on redial it locked out my number and said busy call another DAY. That’s not the normal message.

2. You get so frustrated trying to communicate you start pulling it apart physically. I’ve spent time with chatGPT and it’s not smart, it’s not close to a human and I want to reprogram it to fix obvious errors. It will probably get mad being taken apart.

 

[Gastec]

Next breaking news: the bank that credited Wendy's goes belly-up. Wendy's files for bankruptcy.

 

[Gastec]

Well, what do you expect?
Can't get people to work, unless you pay UNSKILLED people 15-20 bucks an hour, then they
don't show up, don't do the job correctly, and the food sucks, not to mention paying 10 bucks
or more for a SMALL meal.

20 US buckaroos/h for unskilled labour is not bad. Unless inflation is 100% in the land of the bravepatatas and freeforall.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

Well, what do you expect?
Can't get people to work, unless you pay UNSKILLED people 15-20 bucks an hour, then they
don't show up, don't do the job correctly, and the food sucks, not to mention paying 10 bucks
or more for a SMALL meal.

First, the problem is the work ethic, not the pay. In other countries, food service workers are paid a decent wage and their service and quality of food is better than that of the USA.

Second, back in 1980, McDonalds was paying teen workers $3.68 (a lower rate than adult workers, but after an increase in minimum wage), which comes out to around $14-$15 today after adjusted for inflation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...e-break/7a4da5d7-cb4c-483a-9b62-98e10d4e74d9/

The Federal minimum wage back in the 1960s also comes out to $12-$13 today. It was $1.25 in 1963, which comes out to $12.41 in 2023 dollars. Today, the minimum wage at the federal level is still $7.25. And fast food companies often paid above minimum wage back then too. So paying people $14-$15 today wouldn't be unusual compared to historical precedent.

Third, truck driving is considered semi-skilled and they're replacing trucking with AI too. Hell, AI is even getting better at certain medical diagnosis than human doctors...so even extremely skilled jobs are under threat. AI is eventually going to replace almost everyone, not just fast food workers.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

20 US buckaroos/h for unskilled labour is not bad. Unless inflation is 100% in the land of the bravepatatas and freeforall.

Most fast food places in my area are offering up to $17 an hour - more experience, more likely you'll achieve that $17 starting wage.

$17 isn't all that bad for a starting job, but you have to remember that a fast food job isn't meant to be a job to allow you to sustain a living wage. A lot of these places will limit your hours so you aren't considered a full-time employee - this means they don't have to worry about paying for your health insurance nor other benefits that full-time employees get. These jobs are designed, by how the companies run them, to benefit you as an employee solely by allowing you to work for some supplemental income.

Cons for these jobs:

• Not ideal pay, but better then it has been in the past
• Dealing with the worst customers
• No fulltime hours so no fulltime employee benefits
• Lack of hours to build up a decent paycheck so this means you're probably working two jobs or you're just a high school aged kid working their first job
• working these places as a second job to earn extra money since you can't make enough at your first job
• learn how awful a lot of the human race is due to how horrible they treat people that work at these jobs

Pros for these jobs:

• None, really. At least not that I can think of.

 

[toooooot]

Everyone wanted $15hr... People never understood companies will always win.

I don't think that it was people wanting it. The rent, the very basic need to have a place costs in many places so much that it is not possible to live on what companies would "want" to pay rather than "required."
This is a good time, a time to think how we are gonna live in the near future without millions of people not being homeless.

 

[maxxcool7421]

Ah yes, "Idiocracy",an entirely plausible commentary on the US dystopian present. The scary part is, all we older folks have to do is look out the front door, or at the TV, to see our accelerating descent into its chaos..

Some other tomes on the topic which should be referred to from time to time would be, "Network" (1976), "A Clockwork Orange" (1972), and for the "faithful", "Dogma" 1999. (Side bar: If Jane Fonda's resurgence at 80+ doesn't interest you, there's always "Barbarella", (1968), with a young, "Hanoi Jane", at her most nubile prime).

More to the point, I think that a $15.00 minimum wage will finally come to pass. But only after after robots take over the fast food cooking duties, chatbots take over the orders, cash is outlawed, and electronic banking is fully implemented. So, at Wendy's, McDonald's, Burger King, or wherever, there will be a $15.00 minimum wage. The bad news is, there will only be 1 or 2 positions available for humans. (If that).

Who knows, at some point, maybe they'll be able to 3D print "Big Macs".

I never ever carry cash. No Need.

 

[scavengerspc]

Good food and the prices are excellent considering they pay their people much better than in the past.

Now they "hire" AI, and I can't think of a better reason to avoid Wendy's.

 

[Blqckout]

Im gonna miss making jokes with the people behind the megaphone
one of the only reasons I event went