McDonald's Plans to Serve up Artificial Intelligence at Its Drive Thrus Digital Trends

McDonald's is exploring ways to automate its drive-thru service with the help of artificial intelligence. It means that you could soon be chatting with a robot rather than a human when you pull up to place your order. Helping the fast-food giant in its high-tech endeavor is Silicon Valley-based Apprente, which McDonald's revealed this week it has agreed to acquire. Apprente was founded in 2017 to create a voice-based, conversational platform for complex, multilingual, multi-accent, and multi-item conversational ordering. According to McDonald's, Apprente's technology, which is already being tested at select restaurants, will pave the way for "faster, simpler, and more accurate order taking at the drive-thru."