- Yum! Brands announce official partnership with Nvidia
- 500 new Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, and Habit Burger locations will get AI drive-thrus by the end of 2025
- AI is expected to make fast food restaurants more efficient, but is that a good thing?
Last year, Yum! Brands, the company behind Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and KFC, introduced AI to some drive-thru locations. Now the company plans to roll out AI ordering at 500 different restaurants later this year.
If you’ve been to one of the more than 100 AI-powered restaurants across 13 U.S states already, you may have already ordered a Crunchwrap Supreme by speaking to AI. For the rest of us, who’ve yet to experience an AI server, your closest Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, KFC, or Habit Burger might offer the service soon.
In a press release, Yum! Brands announced the new AI partnership with Nvidia that will see artificial intelligence implemented in some of the company’s 61,000 restaurants across the globe. In fact, the company is “Nvidia’s first AI restaurant partner.”
“Yum! and Nvidia are planning to transform the future of dining by unlocking scalable AI applications quickly, reliably and affordably.” But what does that mean exactly?
Well, restaurants chosen for this AI rollout will receive voice-automated order-taking AI agents which the company says will “advance drive-thru and call center operations with conversational AI.”
Elsewhere, the operations side of the restaurants will be improved by AI, with Yum! stating AI will help with analytics to ensure better-performing locations.
AI drive-thrus, yes please (under certain circumstances)
Now, I love fast food just as much as the next person. And, in fact, I hate drive-thrus because I often get a sense of dread as I roll down my window to speak to someone over an intercom.
Will replacing drive-thru employees with AI make the fast food experience better for me? I guess that depends if you think human comprehension is better than artificial intelligence’s.
Personally, I’m all for more efficient fast food restaurants as long as the use of AI doesn’t replace human workers. If this partnership with Nvidia allows Yum! to lay off thousands of employees then I fear for the mass restaurant exodus we’ll experience over the next few years.
As always, use AI to compliment and facilitate your employee’s jobs and you’re onto a winner. Use AI to replace humans, and that’s the dangerous territory that gives reason to the AI-skeptics out there.
One things for sure, if you hate AI, you might have just unlocked an epic fitness hack. Because now there’s a chance you never want to order at your local KFC again.
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john-anthony.disotto@futurenet.com (John-Anthony Disotto)
