{"id":104239,"date":"2025-08-29T12:44:06","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/104239\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T12:44:06","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T12:44:06","slug":"taco-bell-rethinks-ai-drive-through-after-man-orders-18000-waters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/104239\/","title":{"rendered":"Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taco Bell is rethinking its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to power drive-through restaurants in the US after comical videos of the tech making mistakes were viewed millions of times. <\/p>\n

In one clip, a customer seemingly crashed the system by ordering 18,000 water cups, while in another a person got increasingly angry as the AI repeatedly asked him to add more drinks to his order.<\/p>\n

Since 2023, the fast-food chain has introduced the technology at over 500 locations in the US, with the aim of reducing mistakes and speeding up orders. <\/p>\n

But the AI seems to have served up the complete opposite. <\/p>\n

Taco Bell’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer Dane Mathews told The Wall Street Journal<\/a> that deploying the voice AI has had its challenges. <\/p>\n

“Sometimes it lets me down, but sometimes it really surprises me,” he said.<\/p>\n

He said the firm was “learning a lot” – but he would now think carefully about where to use AI going forwards, including not using it at drive-throughs.<\/p>\n

In particular, Mr Matthews said, there are times when humans are better placed to take orders, especially when the restaurants get busy. <\/p>\n

“We’ll help coach teams on when to use voice AI and when it’s better to monitor or step in,” he said. <\/p>\n

The issues have been building online as disgruntled customers take to social media to complain about the service – with many pointing out glitches and issues.<\/p>\n

One clip on Instagram, which has been viewed over 21.5 million times, shows a man ordering “a large Mountain Dew” and the AI voice continually replying “and what will you drink with that?”.<\/p>\n

It isn’t the first time there has been issues with AI not getting it right when it comes to processing food and drink orders. <\/p>\n

Last year McDonald’s withdrew AI from its own drive-throughs<\/a> as the tech misinterpreted customer orders – resulting in one person getting bacon added to their ice cream in error, and another having hundreds of dollars worth of chicken nuggets mistakenly added to their order.<\/p>\n

But despite some of the viral glitches facing Taco Bell, it says two million orders have been successfully processed using the voice AI since its introduction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taco Bell is rethinking its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to power drive-through restaurants in the US after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":104240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-104239","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}