That distant ringing? It's the sound of the Taco Bell death knell, tolling for the restaurant chain's shambolic AI-powered drive-thrus.
We exaggerate, but only a little. The much-maligned tech experiment, which has been deployed at 500 Taco Bell locations across the United States, isn't quite dead yet. But it's received enough backlash since being unleashed on hangry motorists that even one of the company's top executives is having second thoughts.
"We're learning a lot, I'm going to be honest with you," Taco Bell chief digital and technology officer Dane Mathews conceded to the Wall Street Journal, in what sounded like an awfully weary tone.
"I think like everybody, sometimes it lets me down," he admitted, "but sometimes it really surprises me."
The response on social media suggests that most customers probably don't want their drive-thru to "surprise" them. At best, there's short-lived amusement in messing with the AI with outrageous requests, like "18,000 cups of water." At worst, customers just get annoyed or weirded out.
Yelling into an awful microphone while responding to a voice blaring through a busted speaker is a reality many of us slobs looking for a quick bite on a late night have grown familiar with — but it wasn't necessarily an experience that needed innovation from Silicon Valley's latest shiny toy.
Mathews conceded that it may not make sense to use AI at every drive-thru, per the WSJ. He further determined that super-busy restaurants with long lines might be better off with a human handling things.
That's undoubtedly true, but it raises the question: what's the point of using it, then? We're told that AI isn't here to take our jobs but to alleviate our burdens; evidently it can't even do that. The AI's brain melts like a three cheese blend when asked to perform a supposedly low-skilled job done perfectly well by bored teenagers.
Other chains have deployed with AI-powered drive-thrus with similar struggles. McDonald's abandoned its first experiment after the AI provided by its business partner IBM kept screwing up orders. It's giving AI drive-thrus a second go, however, in a new collaboration with Google.
Wendy's announced this year that it'd be expanding its AI-powered drive-thrus to 500 more locations, even though it previously admitted its system required human intervention a Baconated™ 14 percent of the time.
It's not a Crunchwrap™ for Taco Bell's AI efforts, either, and the tech apparently remains a critical part of its future, according to the WSJ.
"I can tell you it's a very active conversation inside Taco Bell in partnership with our franchisees," Mathews told the WSJ. "I think at the end of the day, it's really, really early. And we feel that. And I think other brands feel that, too."
Seemingly, the big restaurant chains are all locked into a game of chicken, seeing who'll blink first with their ludicrous AI schemes.
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