3w ago

Taco Bell rethinks AI order bots — because they don’t work

pivot-to-ai.com Taco Bell rethinks AI order bots — because they don’t work

The second story we ever ran in Pivot to AI was about McDonald’s trying to take drive-through orders with AI speech recognition. The order bot was part of a deal with IBM, which looked very like IB…

and Rime Labs does digital blackface

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSD6-Nf1fg0&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20250830-taco-bell-rethinks-ai-order-bots-because-they-dont-work - podcast

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Aren't most people ordering their fast food through apps nowadays anyway? Isn't this slightly more customer-friendly than AI order bots because it is at least a deterministic system?
Oh, I forgot, these apps will probably be vibe-coded soon too. Never mind.
- Taco Bell's app would probably work better if it was vibe coded.
  
  Lmao yeah, I mean I haven’t used Taco Bell’s, but so many websites and apps are total garbage.
  
  In my experience, the large self-service kiosks at McDonald's are pretty decent (unless they crash, which happens too often). Many people (including myself) use them voluntarily, because if it is nice to have more control of and visual information about your order (including prices, product images, nutritional information, allergens etc.). You don't even need to wait in line anymore if their staff brings your order directly to your table. You don't need to use any tricks to speak to a human either, because you can always go to the counter and order there instead. However, this only works because the kiosks are customer-friendly enough that you don't have to force most people to use them.
  I know that even those kiosks probably aren't great in the sense that they may replace some jobs, at least over the short-term. However, if customers truly like something, this might still lead to more demand and thus more jobs in other areas (people who carry your order to your table, people who prepare the food itself, people who code those apps - unless they are truly "vibe-coded", maintain the kiosks, design their content etc.).
  However, the current "breed" of AI bots is a far cry away from even that, in my impression. They are really primarily used as a threat to “uppity” labor, and who cares about the customers?
  
  McDonald's has the worst kiosks of the three that I have experienced (the other two being Taco Bell and Burger King.)
  They feel slightly laggy, while cramming in as many upsell interstitials (and "log in with your ~~personal data accumulation~~ rewards account" nags) as possible. This makes ordering feel like wading through molasses. The other two could also be slightly streamlined, but the number of clicks to order doesn't feel as egregious. (I'm now tempted to go count and see if my perceptions are accurate...)
  
  Dang, I am missing a lot due to eating junk food instead of fast food.
  
  By the way, I know there is an argument that "low-skilled" jobs should not be eliminated because there are supposedly people who are unable to perform more demanding and varied tasks. But I believe this is partly a myth that was invented as a result of the industrial revolution, because back then, a very large number of people were needed to do such jobs. In addition, this doesn't even address the fact that many of these jobs require some type of specific skill anyway (which isn't getting rewarded appropriately, though).
  The best example to this day are immigrants who have to do "low-skilled" jobs even though they possess academic degrees from their home countries. In such cases, I believe that automation could even lead to the creation of more jobs that match their true skill levels.
  Another problem is that, especially in countries like the US, low-wage jobs are used as a substitute for a reasonable social safety net.
  AI (especially large language models) is, of course, a separate issue, because it is claimed that AI could replace highly skilled and creative workers, which, on the one hand, is used as a constant threat and, on the other hand, is not even remotely true according to current experience.
  
  I guess that’s basically one of my problems with this ai craze. It’s the wrong tool for the job. There are way better ways to automate processes ir whatever they are trying to do. Possibly cheaper, though not having tried to purchase an ai system in kit sure.
  You point nails it, yeah the self serve kiosks are a good example they work way better. Then the human backup is there too.
  At this point I fundamentally disagree that it will replace jobs, the kiosks didn’t. Walmart and Home Depot almost exclusively have self checkout, right? Well what about the cashiers? For one, those stores had like…. 3 cashiers for the entire store so not many are replaced. Further, now they have the employee milling about the self checkout kiosks for whatever. Shrink prevention, assistance because the self checkouts are hilariously dumb etc. the jobs changed but they are still there.

18 comments