OpenAI announced today that users will soon be able to buy products through ChatGPT. The rollout of shopping buttons for AI-powered search queries will come to everyone, whether they are a signed-in user or not. Shoppers will not be able to check out inside of ChatGPT; instead they will be redirected to the merchant's website to finish the transaction. In a prelaunch demo for WIRED, Adam Fry, the ChatGPT search product lead at OpenAI, demonstrated how the updated user experience could be used to help people using the tool for product research decide which espresso machine or office chair to buy. The product recommendations shown to prospective shoppers are based on what ChatGPT remembers about a user's preferences as well as product reviews pulled from across the web.

On 1 April, the same day California's new 20 hourly minimum wage for fast food workers went into effect, a new restaurant opened in north-east Los Angeles that was conspicuously light on human staff. CaliExpress by Flippy claims to be the world's first fully autonomous restaurant, using a system of AI-powered robots to churn out fast food burgers and fries. A small number of humans are still required to push the buttons on the machines and assemble the burgers and toppings, but the companies involved tout that using their technology could cut labor costs, perhaps dramatically. "Eat the future," they offer. I visited CaliExpress last week to find out what an all-American lunch served with a side of existential dread tastes like.

You could see it coming. Flippy started acting weird, jerking and hitching. The worker on the fry station had witnessed this behavior before. Even Joe Garcia, the Miso Robotics "robot support specialist" assigned to troubleshoot at Jack in the Box, had seen it. Garcia, a mechanical engineering graduate from Loyola Marymount University who one day wants to work for NASA, is spending his days swooping in when Flippy occasionally loses his mind as he encounters tacos.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Welcome back to Talking Tech. How many of you like Chipotle?

Hannah Fry is getting exercised about a domestic appliance. The refrigerator in question was in perfect working order, but "it had a sticker on it that said: 'This fridge is AI ready.' I just don't know what on Earth that means." If she can't understand that claim, there won't be many people who can. Fry, a professor in the mathematics of cities at University College London, is a seasoned public speaker and broadcaster who won the prestigious Zeeman Medal in 2018 in recognition of her work to improve the public's understanding of maths.

So far, however, Domino's has stopped short of the latest McDonald's play: acquiring entire tech start-ups. In March, McDonald's spent more than $300 million to buy Dynamic Yield, the Tel Aviv-based company that developed the artificial intelligence tools now used at thousands of McDonald's drive-throughs. The deal "has changed the way the high-tech industry thinks about potential M&A," said Liad Agmon, a former Israeli intelligence official who co-founded Dynamic Yield. "We'll see more nontraditional tech companies buying tech companies as an accelerator for their digital efforts. It was genius on McDonald's side."

As the evolution of the McDonald's drive-through shows, the internet shopping experience, with its recommendation algorithms and personalization, is increasingly shaping the world of brick-and-mortar retail, as restaurants, clothing stores, supermarkets and other businesses use new technology to collect consumer data and then deploy that information to encourage more spending. At some stores, Bluetooth devices now track shoppers' movements, allowing companies to send texts and emails recommending products that customers lingered over but did not buy. And a number of retailers are experimenting with facial-recognition tools and other technologies -- sometimes known as "offline cookies" -- that allow businesses to gather information about customers even when they are away from their computers. In the restaurant world, the increasingly popular food-delivery apps have produced a slew of customer data. But much of that information is controlled by third-party technology companies rather than by the restaurants themselves, underlining the importance of tech expertise as the industry grows more competitive. "A lot of the restaurant chains, the larger ones that have the cash and the clout and the depth, are really turning into quasi-technology companies," said Michael Atkinson, who runs Orderscape, a company that provides voice-ordering technology.

The world's biggest restaurant company is buying startup Apprente Inc., a developer of voice-recognition technology for use in the restaurant industry, to help speed up lines. The idea is to eventually have a machine, instead of a person, on the other side of the intercom to relay orders to kitchen staff. In Chicago-area restaurants where the system is already being tested, employees still oversee drive-thru order-taking and can step in when needed. The acquisition is McDonald's third tech deal in the past six months, and fits into the company's push to lean more heavily on machines and artificial intelligence to boost sales. McDonald's is also using Apprente's headquarters in Mountain View, California--also home to Google owner Alphabet Inc.--to start a tech lab, with plans to add employees there.

Nuro has partnered with Fry's Food Stores to utilize its autonomous vehicles to deliver groceries in Scottsdale. Supermarket giant Kroger said it soon will end a pilot program in which more than 2,000 grocery deliveries were made in self-driving vehicles from a store in Scottsdale, Arizona. The program, launched last August, featured deliveries in autonomous vehicles from robotics company Nuro from the Kroger-owned Fry's store at 7770 E. McDowell Road for customers in ZIP code 85257. The companies described it as the nation's first program featuring deliveries to the general public from fully unmanned vehicles. Wednesday will mark the final day of deliveries.

As is tradition, yesterday I attended IP EXPO at the London ExCel. Normally at these sort of events I don't have the time to make it to any of the various seminars taking place, but this time I made a conscious effort to make some time and I am pleased that I did. I managed to partake in a very interesting talk from Dr Hannah Fry titled: How to be human in the age of the machine. As I bumbled into an already packed out Keynote Theatre, flat white and notepad in hand, I wasn't really sure what to expect. Tech isn't the sexiest thing in the world, but Dr Fry made the whole talk incredibly engaging with jokes, anecdotes, visuals and a healthy dose of audience participation.