Imagine driving by your favorite fast food restaurant, stopping at the window and asking for a menu. But there is no human, just a chatbot that manages your request, serves you and charges you: this is what Wendy's is beginning to apply thanks to artificial intelligence based on natural language software developed by Google and trained to understand the multiple ways customers order food.
Interacting exclusively with machines when going to a fast-food restaurant could be quite normal in a very short time. It will soon be a reality in the premises of the American fast food multinational Wendy's. In some of its restaurants there will be this type of automated service, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal this week.
The company's decision to bet on generative AI will officially go live in June at a company-owned restaurant in Columbus, Ohio. The goal is to streamline the ordering process and prevent long lines in self-service lines from attracting customers.
“It will be very conversational. You won't know you're not talking to an employee," said Wendy's CEO Todd Penegor, whose company has collaborated with Google to create a generative AI application designed to recognize and mimic the syntax and semantics of human speech.
Despite the fears that this process arouses, Penegor assures that the deployment of the chatbot is not related to the restructuring of the company and that in no case are they replacing human workers with the chatbot. On the contrary, the manager believes that AI will help employees do their job better.
The linguistic model on which the Wendy's chatbot is based integrates terms, phrases and acronyms unique to the fast food establishment, such as “JBC” for the hamburger, or “biggie bags” for the combos, in addition to the ability to offer larger sizes to the clients. All this, so that soon you can take your order with the only help of AI.
