Inside the making of Taco Bell's artificially intelligent TacoBot

Welcome to 2016, where you can buy flowers, book a flight and order an Uber through messaging apps like Facebook Messenger and Slack. Last week, Taco Bell and its agency, Deutsch, unveiled the TacoBot, a Siri-like version of the cashiers that take your order at its restaurants. Taco Bell built the bot for workplaces that use Slack's messaging platform to communicate internally. Now, instead of someone jotting everyone's orders on a Post-it and hoping the drive-thru attendant gets everything right, they can ask TacoBot to put in the order for them. "I've described TacoBot as your own personal Taco Bell butler," said Andy McCraw, Taco Bell's digital innovation and on-demand product manager.