McDonald's To Remove Its AI Drive-Thru Voice-Ordering System From 100 Restaurants. Internet Reacts

In this day and age, when more and more companies are integrating AI-backed technologies in their daily operations, McDonald’s has decided to take a step back from it. On Monday, it was reported the fast food chain plans to remove its AI drive-thru voice-ordering system from over 100 restaurants. This removal will conclude by the end of next month. These AI voice systems were made in collaboration with IBM. The multinational technology company provided systems to use AI for taking people’s voice orders at drive-thru kiosks, instead of a real worker attending to them.

While McDonald’s has not specified why they are cancelling it, many speculate the system failed to take exact orders. According to Fortune Magazine, many customers have taken pointed out on social media that they repeatedly got wrong orders from McDonald’s AI system.

Ever since the news about McDonald’s departure from IBM’s AI-based drive-thru ordering system came out, people are discussing what might have led to the step. While some say that IBM must have failed to build a good AI service system, others blame McDonald’s for not using the technology well.

Commenting on this issue, an X user wrote, “I think AI is great and it should be used, but it is terrible when interacting with humans when humans want something very specific. Like a chatbot that tries to answer a question a human has on a website or AI trying to take an order for specific things, we aren’t there.”

Someone wrote that the fast food company could have developed a better AI-based drive-thru ordering system by hiring smaller companies instead of IBM.

Someone else guessed, “More likely that both McDonald’s and IBM share the blame. MCD’s digital execution has been a mess all around. Have you tried using their app?”

Blaming IBM, an X user opined, “In the past, IBM has severely mishandled Watson for hospitals. The bigger question is, how did they secure a deal? Their AI technology is poor. It must be due to some sort of sales relationship with top management rather than an objective tech evaluation.”

An X user who claimed to be a former IBM member wrote, “I worked at IBM for 10 years a long time ago – large projects with large clients fail for many reasons. many of which are caused by the clients themselves.”

Despite cancelling their AI ordering system, Mason Smoot, the chief restaurant officer for McDonald’s USA told trade publication Restaurant Business that they still plan to “explore voice ordering solutions more broadly.”