The world’s largest restaurant chain has announced it’s teaming up with IBM to take its drive-thru lanes further into the future. The project will see McDonald’s on-the-go ordering system fitted with new AI-powered features, such as voice recognition.
“In my mind, IBM is the ideal partner for McDonald’s given their expertise in building AI-powered customer care solutions and voice recognition,” said McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski, as per CNBC.
Fingers crossed the fast-food group’s new system will fare better than the voice assistants currently ruling the industry, because if experience has taught us anything, it’s that Siri, Alexa, or Google often doesn’t understand human speech all too well.
As part of the new partnership, IBM will take over McD Tech Labs, the company’s tech arm, which it acquired back in 2019. Drive-thru technology pioneered by the firm had undergone a trial earlier this summer at several restaurants in the Chicago area.
According to Futurism, McDonald’s reported that its system could handle nearly 80% of the overall orders, with an accuracy rate of 85%.
While companies become more efficient with the advent of technology, some in the industry worry it could mean more workers could lose their jobs. However, Kempczinski said the brand’s employees were looking forward to getting the new system up and running.
“We’ve had to do a little bit of training of ‘just keep your hands off the steering wheel, let the computer do its work,’” he explained.
Will the new automated drive-thru lanes speed up long, snaking queues, or will it cause an even bigger jam as customers struggle with speaking to a computer? We’ll soon find out.
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