McDonald’s customers could soon give their order to a robot.
The fast food company is testing a new artificial intelligence order taking system drive-thru called ArchIQ in five locations across the country right now, according to Restaurant Business Magazine.
The initiative is part of the company’s new brand strategy called McDonald’s Next, announced this week.
FOX Business contacted McDonald’s for comments.
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McDonald’s is testing a new drive-thru AI order-taking system. (Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)
During the McDonald’s NEXT presentation earlier this week, Chris Kempczinski, CEO said customers shouldn’t have to choose between “hospitality or speed.”
McFranchisee, an X account for a McDonald’s franchise, said this week that Google is affiliated with the new project.
“Meet Archy IQ – no, we’re not new to AOT. In fact, we’ve been in this AI space for about 8 years,” McFranchisee wrote on X on Tuesday.
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“We sold our in-house model to IBM and we left because it wasn’t enough for our needs. As mentioned below, I wanted to hire Google (which uses NVIDIA) to maintain our AOT 3 years ago and found out today that Google was behind this project. We are currently in 5 test stores, having processed over a million transactions with approximately 90% of orders completed without human escalation. Impressive for a new test.”
A woman works at a McDonalds in Manhattan on January 5, 2024 in New York. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images/Getty Images)
McFranchisee said all McDonald’s nationwide will benefit from the installation of Google Edge Cloud blades prior to deployment.
“Archy will not only help with drive-thru orders but also act as a master brain to help managers run a better restaurant,” he adds. “It’s like a personal assistant that alerts you to potential bottlenecks or problems.”
Most of the comments under post X were negative.
“We all hate the system at Wendy’s,” one person wrote. “We hate the kiosks at McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Taco Bell that we are asked to use instead of talking to a person. We’re going to hate it too. Say goodbye to customers.
The McDonald’s logo is displayed at a McDonald’s restaurant on July 22, 2024 in Burbank, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images/Getty Images)
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“No one wants that – we like to deal with smiling faces,” said another, to which McFranchisee responded: “We always smile at the cash and gift window – that’s right on the speaker.”
The new AI initiative comes two years after McDonald’s abandoned another similar initiative.
