An AI Chatbot Will Soon Take Your Wendy's Drive-Through Orders

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AI chatbots are slowly taking over, and this time they're coming for fast food. Wendy's will start using artificial intelligence chatbots to take drive-through orders.

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The chatbot will run on Google's natural language processing software and will be able to understand customers' orders. Even when there's a complicated order, the chatbot will be trained to understand it — like, when someone changes their order or uses terminology and slang related specifically to the Wendy's menu. For example, regular Wendy's customers might call a junior bacon cheeseburger "JBC" for short or say "biggie bags" for meal combos.

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Wendy's Chief Executive Todd Penegor told ‌The Wall Street Journal‌ that the chatbot will be conversational and customers won't even realize they're talking to a AI as it'll mimic the syntax and semantics of human speech. In fact, the chatbot has even be programmed to upsell customers, offering larger sizes, Frosties, or daily specials.

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Once the chatbot takes an order, it will show up on a screen for the line cooks as normal, so meals will be prepared and handed off by actual people, not robots.

The new AI chatbot will launch at a company-owned Wendy's in Columbus, Ohio in June.

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