Do you want fr-AI-s with that appy-meal? McDonald's gobbles machine-learning biz for space-age Drive Thrus

McDonald's has wolfed down Apprente, an AI startup focused on voice recognition. One of America's biggest fast-food chains wants to get its greasy hands on machine learning. Apprente, based in Mountain View, California, was founded in 2017, and has been building speech-powered customer-service chatbots. Now, the team will be rebranded as McD Tech Labs, and will slap their technology into McDonald's Drive Thru service. "The initial focus of the Silicon Valley team will be to enhance technology for use in McDonald's Drive Thru," gushed the McFlurry giant in a statement.