McDonald’s is ending its artificial intelligence ordering system at some of its drive-thrus, for now, the company said Monday.
The fast food giant said in a statement to TODAY.com that it had decided to end its partnership with IBM on an automated order taker (AOT) that uses artificial intelligence technology.
“Through our partnership with IBM, we have captured many learnings and feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly,” a McDonald’s representative said in the statement. “After careful review, McDonald’s has decided to end our current global partnership with IBM on AOT beyond this year. “IBM remains a trusted partner and we will continue to use many of its products in our global system.”
The partnership began in 2021 to support the “increasing demands” of the company’s restaurant teams and to “determine whether an automated voice ordering solution could simplify operations for staff and create an improved, faster experience” for customers, McDonald’s said at the time.
“As we move forward, our work with IBM has given us confidence that a drive-thru voice ordering solution will be part of the future of our restaurants,” the McDonald’s representative said.
The company added that it still sees a “tremendous opportunity” to advance restaurant technology and will make a decision on “a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year.”
The end of the partnership comes after McDonald’s customers documented their interactions with AI technology on social media.
Some of the fails had gone viral online, including a TikTok from 2022 in which a man struggled to order a Mountain Dew with his Big Mac meal and instead kept adding a medium Coke to his order.
“No, no, that is not correct. Cancel,” she said, before trying to order her food again.
In another TikTok, the same user tried to buy two ice cream cones, but they added bacon to the ice cream. When he attempted to remove the bacon, the system prompted him for three ice cream cones, according to the video.
A woman posted a TikTok of her attempt to order water and a cup of vanilla ice cream, and while the system got her order right, it also added four packets of ketchup and two packets of butter that she didn’t order.
In 2021, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said at Alliance Bernstein’s Strategic Decisions conference that restaurants using voice ordering technology achieved about 85% order accuracy, and only about a fifth of the orders had to be fulfilled by a human, CNBC reported.
