AI drive-thrus may be good for business. But not for the rest of us - CNN

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AI drive-thrus may be good for business. But not for the rest of us - CNN

Neuroscientists test out brain-reading AI on CNN reporter 04:52 - Source: CNN New York CNN  —  Over the past few years, restaurants from White Castle to Wendy’s have been investing in artificial intelligence tech for drive-thrus. They say it’s a way to ease the burden placed on overworked employees, and a solution to bogged down drive-thrus overwhelmed by a surge of customers. But customers — and workers — may not be thrilled with the technology. Frustrated customers have already documented cases of AI getting their orders wrong, and experts warn the noisy drive-thru is a challenging environment for the technology. And AI may swipe hours or even entire jobs away from fast-food workers. But restaurants are forging ahead, buoyed by the promise of higher sales and faster drive-thrus, whether we like it or not. Some fast-food aficionados may not have noticed AI at their drive-thru lanes yet, but since about 2021 chains have been testing out AI tools like automated voice ordering, where an AI rather than a person takes your order at the drive-thru,. These efforts have ramped up recently, with two announcements in May. CKE Restaurants (owner of Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr.) said it will roll out AI ordering capability more broadly after a successful pilot. Soon after, Wendy’s said it had expanded its partnership with Google Cloud to include an AI ordering tool at the drive-thru. The chain is piloting the program in Columbus, Ohio this month. Even the suppliers of the tech note the challenges of a fast-food application: “You may think driving by and speaking into a drive-thru is an easy problem for AI, but it’s actually one of the hardest,” Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, told the Wall Street Journal in reference to the collaboration. Speech recognition technology “is really challenging,” said Christina McAllister, senior analyst at research agency Forrester, who studies the impact of using AI in call centers. Accents can throw the system off, and “it doesn’t perform particularly well in noisy areas,” she noted. Shouting an order over a car full of kids arguing or friends laughing may confuse the technology and, in turn, annoy the customer. “One of the things that frustrates customers the most is having to repeat themselves when they shouldn’t have to,” she said. Those customers may end up unleashing their anger at the next employee they see. In real-world situations, reactions to AI drive-thrus are still mixed. Out of ten orders placed by customers at an Indiana White Castle that uses AI in its drive-thru, three people asked to speak with a human employee, because of either an error or a desire to simply talk to a person, the Wall Street Journal recently reported. That said, AI inherently improves as it collects more data. The experience may improve after tools take more orders and learn to better recognize voices. For companies, a hiccup-y start seems to be well worth the potential boost to sales. One of the main benefits of using AI in the drive-thru is that it upsells relentlessly — leading customers to spend more, according to Presto Automation, an AI company that works with restaurants and has partnered with CKE. Presto Voice “upsells in every order,” interim CEO Krishna Gupta said during a May analyst call. “It results in higher check sizes.” Customers, he reasoned, “want faster speed of service. They want better customer satisfaction and they want higher check sizes and they are getting it all with Presto Voice.” It’s hard to believe that customers want to spend more — but restaurant operators certainly want them to. On its website, Presto describes “the perfect upsell” as one that may be tailored to the weather, time of day, the order itself or the customer’s order history. Some analysts are similarly bullish. “We believe that AI voice recognition and digital only lanes could speed up the average drive through service time by at least 20-30%,” analysts wrote in a Bernstein Research note published in March. “We expect AI to augment the competitive advantages of restaurants with digital culture.” Short-staffed restaurants may see AI as a way to fill in the gaps. While restaurants and bars have been adding jobs in recent months, employment in the leisure and hospitality sector was down by 349,000 in May compared to February 2020. Some re...