By AJ Dellinger
Last year, Taco Bell made a simple bet that Alexa-like voice assistants could handle the drive-thru window. It didn’t consider whether people could handle dealing with AI. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company embedded AI in the drive-thru boxes at more than 500 locations across the country and quickly found that it made mistakes, creeped people out, and got very easily manipulated.
“We’re learning a lot, I’m going to be honest with you,” Taco Bell Chief Digital and Technology Officer Dane Mathews told WSJ. One of the lessons: People really like messing with AI, like ordering “18,000 cups of water, please.” If you browse Taco Bell Reddit (a surprisingly vibrant community), there are employees and Bell Heads alike lamenting the AI takeover. One employee posted that the AI assistant started telling people that the restaurant was out of everything but drinks and sauce packets. A person attempting to order a Chalupa Supreme with onions from the AI assistant ended up with three chalupas, and when they tried to replace meat with beans, the AI simply refused.
So things are not going great, but that is not stopping Taco Bell from pushing forward with its AI embrace in one way or another. The fast food staple’s parent company, Yum Brands, announced a partnership with Nvidia earlier this year with the goal of improving the technology that powers its AI operations, including the order takers.
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