Hey Siri, Get Me A Big Mac – Fast Food AI
You will soon be able to ask an AI patron what burger you’d like at McDonalds. McDonalds have announced that they are buying the voice tech startup Apprente. Why? So they can automate their drive-thru menu. *cue old people moaning that it will cost jobs!* Fast Food AI is on the way!
The Mountain View based company specialise in buidling voice agents which can take orders in a variety of languages and accents. McDonalds have been testing the tech in a number of locations and they hope it will make for “faster, simpler and more accurate order taking” via it’s drive-thrus.
McD Tech Labs
Apprente will be a part of the McD Tech Labs. Which are a new restaurant tech group. The team will become the groups founding members and co-founder Itamar Arel will serve as it’s vice-president.
“McDonald’s commitment to innovation has long inspired our team. It was quite clear from our various engagements that McDonald’s is leading the industry with technology”
“Apprente was borne out of an opportunity to use technology to solve challenging real world problems and we’re thrilled to now apply this to creating personalized experiences for customers and crew.”
Itamar Arel, Ph.D, co-founder of Apprente and Vice President of McD Tech Labs.
There is potential to expand Apprente’s tech into other areas like mobile and kiosk ordering. McDonalds purchase of Apprente is it’s third of 2019. After it acquired Dynamic Yield earlier this year in April. A personalised data startup, which customises it’s drive-thru menus by the weather, time of day, restaurant traffic and trending menu items. They also bought a minority stake in Plexure a New Zealand mobile app tech company. Fast Food AI looks incredible helpful, though at the cost of some jobs, will it create more at other areas of the company?
(Engadget)
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