I’m uncomfortable with Wendy’s new AI-driven point-of-sale systems. On a number of levels. Even though I haven’t personally experienced them, yet. Maybe I’m just too old school. But the whole thing creeps me out…
A digital, AI-driven video Fast Food store menu board: Ready to be served? Or manipulated?
Like an evil clown…
The spectre of Wendy’s new AI-driven ordering and payment systems haunts me. Not in my dreams or anything. But I get a little chill up my spine every time I picture myself talking to a machine that talks back.
Take a gander at the TicTok video posted by a Wendy’s customer who unexpectedly encountered her first AI Drive-Thru app on a visit to her fave location this past week.
The speech-aware ‘artificial entity’ not only posts the content of your order in print on its screen. It also talks back to you in an eerily real sounding machine voice. And like a human order taker, it even prods you to buy additional stuff: “Want fries with that?”
Not perfect, yet
It all seems surreal to me. But I have garnered some gratification and affirmation from another AI Drive-Thru user who tried a more-complicated order and found the system couldn’t handle it. Human intervention was needed to successfully conclude the transaction. The kind of issues that the AI couldn’t navigate included exceptions to the standard menu board lingo, such as, “hold the onions”.
More to come
The Drive-Thru app is just the first AI innovation slated for roll out across the Wendy’s chain. They’re also going to update their in-store menu boards with video screens that can be changed at a moment’s notice. That plan was billed originally as ‘dynamic pricing’. And that sent up flares in the fan community.
Folks assumed it meant that Wendy’s was going to institute surge pricing – raising its prices during peak traffic hours. But the company moved quickly to quash that misapprehension. Even so… The capability to implement surge pricing and other potentially nefarious practices is just a few key taps away, already built into the system.
Nevertheless…
I have grave reservations about all the personal data the AI systems will gather and store. About every customer who patronizes Wendy’s. Whether they’re a member of the Rewards loyalty program, or not.
I shudder inwardly at the idea of a computer which knows so much about me that it thinks it can guess what I want to order next… I wonder if such systems will someday become so powerful that they will be able to manipulate me without my realizing it?
My questions to you…
Do you approve of Fast Food AI systems?
Will you use them?
Do you harbour any fears or misgivings about point-of-sale AI?
Muse on that…
~ Maggie J.