Taco Bell’s drive-thru AI might take your next order

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Taco Bell’s parent company aims to bring its ‘Voice AI’ technology to hundreds of stores in the US by the end of the year.

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

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An image of a Taco Bell restaurant.

Image: Taco Bell

Your next Taco Bell drive-thru order might be handled by AI — and an AI may have helped you get a Chalupa already. Parent company Yum! Brands has been testing its “Voice AI” technology at more than 100 Taco Bell drive-thru in the US, and now Yum! aims to bring the technology to “hundreds” of Taco Bell stores by the end of the year, according to a press release.

Yum! is pitching the AI tech as a way to ease task load for staffers, improve order accuracy, and reduce wait times — all, of course, while “driving profitable growth for Taco Bell, Yum! Brands and their franchisees.” But the fast food industry’s experiments with AI have had mixed results so far: while Wendy’s has been thrilled with its tests, McDonald’s recently pulled back its plans.

There are more than 7,400 Taco Bell stores in the US, so this will still be a small rollout. The original tests at more than 100 stores have been going on for around two years, Bloomberg reports. Yum! is also bringing Voice AI to five KFC restaurants in Australia.

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