Customers using Wendy's drive-through service won't be talking to a human employee for much longer—from June, a chatbot is set to take over.
As The Wall Street JournalThe Wall Street Journal reports, Wendy's opted to use Google's natural language software to train an AI capable of taking food orders. Wendy’s chief executive Todd Penegor says the chatbot is so good, "you won’t know you’re talking to anybody but an employee."
Wendy's had to work closely with Google to fine tune its large language model to cope with the vast array of ways in which customers order food at the drive-through. The customizations required include "unique terms, phrases and acronyms." That way, any combination of food items can be handled, but so can common terms such as "biggie bags" or someone asking for a "JBC."
Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, admits a drive-through AI is actually "a very complicated technical problem." However, Wendy's chatbot is expected to be very accomplished and can even handle a customer changing their mind halfway through ordering. On top of that, it will promote the daily specials and attempts to upsell customers in a bid to increase the size/range of food items ordered.
To begin with, the chatbot will be used at a company-owned restaurant in Columbus, Ohio starting in June. It's unclear if Wendy's will announce specifically when and where the chatbot starts work, but if it's as good as claimed, they probably won't to see if anyone notices.