Chinese KFC Restaurants Use Facial Recognition To Make Meal Suggestions

If you loathe having to talk out loud when ordering a meal at a fast-food restaurant, and you happen to love KFC, then you might want to start considering packing it up and moving to China where Baidu has just teamed up with the major chicken brand to create a more automated restaurant. At this particular KFC location in China, patrons can walk up to a display and simply let it decide a meal for them (don't fret: the user can override with their own choices). The idea here is to see how good Baidu's algorithm can guess what someone's in the mood for, based on a variety of metrics and some machine learning. In a particular example, a man in his 20s might get a suggestion for a crispy chicken burger, chicken wings, and the healthiest part of the meal, a Coca Cola. A woman in her 50s, by contrast, could be recommended a delicious porridge and soybean milk for breakfast.