AI Conquered Coding. Fast Food Is Next
AI Conquered Coding. Fast Food Is Next
AI 征服了编程，下一个目标是快餐
Kristen Charpentier’s first hint that she was talking to a robot when she pulled into a Dairy Queen drive-thru lane was that the voice coming out of the speaker was, simply put, “too nice.” 当 Kristen Charpentier 开车进入冰雪皇后（Dairy Queen）的得来速（drive-thru）车道时，她察觉到自己正在与机器人对话的第一个迹象是，从扬声器里传出的声音简单来说就是“太客气了”。
“There was no communication delay or weirdness to it. It felt completely natural,” Charpentier tells WIRED. “But just a little too pleasant to be human.” “沟通没有任何延迟或怪异之处。感觉非常自然，”Charpentier 告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志，“但它表现得太友好了，不像是一个真人。”
The voice punctuated its sentences with pleases and thank yous. It was soft and friendly. Its attempts to upsell Charpentier on extra Snickers for her Blizzard were perfectly polite. 那个声音在句子中穿插着“请”和“谢谢”。它听起来柔和且友好。它试图向 Charpentier 推销在她的暴风雪（Blizzard）冰淇淋中额外添加士力架的行为，显得非常有礼貌。
But Charpentier worked the Dairy Queen drive-thru herself as a teenager. She knew something wasn’t adding up. When she drove up to collect her Blizzard at the window of the Cary, North Carolina, drive-thru, she asked the worker in the window: Had AI taken her order? 但 Charpentier 年轻时自己就在冰雪皇后的得来速工作过。她知道有些地方不对劲。当她开车到北卡罗来纳州卡里市（Cary）的窗口取餐时，她问窗口的工作人员：是 AI 接的单吗？
The employee confirmed to Charpentier that she was one of the thousands of customers across the US to have experienced an AI-voice-equipped drive-thru. In 2024, roughly 4 percent of fast-food locations in the US used voice AI technology in the drive-thru lane, according to Intouch Insight’s annual Drive Thru Survey. Last year, that figure grew to 5 percent; early research suggests that has now climbed to 6 percent. 员工向 Charpentier 证实，她是全美数千名体验过 AI 语音得来速服务的顾客之一。根据 Intouch Insight 的年度得来速调查，2024 年，美国约有 4% 的快餐店在得来速车道使用了语音 AI 技术。去年，这一数字增长到 5%；早期研究表明，目前这一比例已攀升至 6%。
For most of these customers, the first AI order comes as a surprise, one to be filmed and posted on TikTok or Snapchat. But soon, these automated ordering systems will seem downright banal. At certain chains, voice AI is already the new normal. Taco Bell announced in July that it has rolled out AI at 890 drive-thru lanes, more than 10 percent of the chain’s US locations. Dairy Queen is implementing the tech in 25 states, with eventual plans to roll it out to all restaurants. Twelve percent of White Castles use an AI named “Julia” in their drive-thrus; all new locations now open with Julia targeting orders. 对于大多数顾客来说，第一次 AI 点餐是一种惊喜，甚至会被拍下来发到 TikTok 或 Snapchat 上。但很快，这些自动点餐系统就会变得司空见惯。在某些连锁店，语音 AI 已经成为新常态。塔可钟（Taco Bell）在 7 月宣布，已在 890 条得来速车道部署了 AI，占其美国门店总数的 10% 以上。冰雪皇后正在 25 个州实施该技术，并计划最终推广到所有门店。12% 的白色城堡（White Castle）餐厅在得来速使用名为“Julia”的 AI；现在所有新开业的门店都直接由 Julia 负责接单。
“The brands who have invested and who have been testing this heavily over the last three years—the technology has gotten to a point where they are ready to go,” Sarah Beckett, vice president of sales and marketing at Intouch Insight, tells WIRED. “They’re going to start scaling this massively.” “那些在过去三年里投入并进行了大量测试的品牌，其技术已经成熟，随时可以投入使用，”Intouch Insight 销售与营销副总裁 Sarah Beckett 告诉《连线》杂志，“他们即将开始大规模推广。”
Somehow, without most of the fast-food public even noticing, the age of the headset entered its final gasps. Welcome to the era of the AI drive-thru. 不知不觉中，在大多数快餐消费者还没察觉的情况下，耳机时代已进入了尾声。欢迎来到 AI 得来速时代。
McDonald’s kicked off the craze in 2019 with the acquisition of AI-drive-thru startup Apprete, which the fast-food giant swiftly folded into a new division called McD Tech Labs. With the pandemic-induced drive-thru boom, other chains were eager to launch their own AI partnerships: Del Taco and Dairy Queen with Presto, Panda Express and White Castle with SoundHound, Taco Bell with Nvidia and Omilia. AI was the future, the chains said in press releases: faster, more accurate, and better at upselling than humans could ever hope to become. 麦当劳在 2019 年收购了 AI 得来速初创公司 Apprete，开启了这股热潮，这家快餐巨头迅速将其整合进了一个名为 McD Tech Labs 的新部门。随着疫情引发的得来速热潮，其他连锁店也急于启动自己的 AI 合作伙伴关系：Del Taco 和冰雪皇后选择了 Presto，熊猫快餐（Panda Express）和白色城堡选择了 SoundHound，塔可钟则选择了英伟达（Nvidia）和 Omilia。连锁店在新闻稿中宣称，AI 就是未来：它比人类更快速、更准确，且更擅长推销。
Then came the reality check. 随后，现实给了他们一记耳光。
If you searched “AI drive-thru” on social media in 2023, you’d see how the revolutionary technology was actually faring. There was the TikTok showing McDonald’s AI adding 260 Chicken McNuggets to an order, as the customers screamed: “Stop! Stop! Stop!” Next year came a TikTok showing AI adding bacon to a McDonald’s ice cream order. And then there were the customers who recorded themselves trying to break the AI, like the guy who ordered 18,000 cups of water at Taco Bell. 如果你在 2023 年的社交媒体上搜索“AI 得来速”，你就会看到这项革命性技术的真实表现。TikTok 上曾出现麦当劳 AI 在订单中添加了 260 个麦乐鸡块，顾客尖叫着：“停！停！停！”的视频。第二年，TikTok 上又出现了 AI 在麦当劳冰淇淋订单中添加培根的视频。还有些顾客录下自己试图“搞崩”AI 的过程，比如那个在塔可钟点了一万八千杯水的家伙。
The social media mockery was accompanied by less dramatic failures. In a perfect world, AI agents taking orders should be invisible—the equivalent of an extremely polite, extremely underpaid employee. In reality, Intouch Insight found that AI drive-thrus tended to be less friendly than humans, with lower order accuracy. It’s difficult for an automated agent to understand some accents and dialects, something that most chains solve by having a human employee on a headset, ready to intervene. For human workers, the cascading flowchart of a fast-food order feels natural; for most early AI agents, it was a bafflingly complex formula. 社交媒体上的嘲讽还伴随着一些不那么戏剧性的失败。在理想世界中，负责点餐的 AI 代理应该是隐形的——相当于一个极其礼貌、薪水极低的员工。但现实中，Intouch Insight 发现 AI 得来速往往不如人类友好，且订单准确率较低。自动化代理很难理解某些口音和方言，大多数连锁店通过安排一名佩戴耳机的人类员工随时准备干预来解决这个问题。对于人类员工来说，快餐订单的层级流程感觉很自然；但对于大多数早期 AI 代理来说，这是一个令人困惑的复杂公式。
“The restaurants ended up spending more time smoothing over the problem they created,” says Michael Schatzberg, cofounder of Branded Hospitality, which invests in food-service-technology companies. “Everyone was like, ‘This is the worst. Stop. Get the people back with the headsets.’” “餐厅最终花费了更多时间来修补他们自己制造的问题，”投资餐饮技术公司的 Branded Hospitality 联合创始人 Michael Schatzberg 说，“每个人都觉得：‘这太糟糕了。停下吧。让戴耳机的人回来吧。’”
Branded Hospitality sold off its early AI-drive-thru investments. In 2024, Del Taco rolled back its AI-drive-thru test. McDonald’s eventually sold McD Tech Labs to IBM and later pulled the plug on the tech altogether. Branded Hospitality 出售了其早期的 AI 得来速投资。2024 年，Del Taco 撤回了其 AI 得来速测试。麦当劳最终将 McD Tech Labs 出售给 IBM，随后彻底叫停了该技术。
Not every chain discarded their AI-drive-thru efforts. Many—including Dairy Queen, White Castle, and Taco Bell—continued to quietly expand their tests. AI represented more than new technology. It was the dream at the very core of fast food: making the process of obtaining sustenance faster and faster, while cutting costs further and further. 并非所有连锁店都放弃了 AI 得来速的尝试。许多品牌——包括冰雪皇后、白色城堡和塔可钟——继续悄悄扩大测试。AI 不仅仅代表新技术，它还是快餐业核心的梦想：让获取食物的过程越来越快，同时不断削减成本。
Four years into White Castle’s partnership with SoundHound AI, chief marketing officer Jamie Richardson says AI drive-thrus make employee shifts run smoother and speed up service. (Intouch Insight finds that, on average, AI drive-thrus beat the industry by 21 seconds.) 在白色城堡与 SoundHound AI 合作四年后，首席营销官 Jamie Richardson 表示，AI 得来速让员工轮班更顺畅，并加快了服务速度。（Intouch Insight 发现，平均而言，AI 得来速比行业平均水平快 21 秒。）
He also says viral AI-drive-thru disasters tend to be overblown. White Castle’s strategy focuses on incremental improvement rather than waiting for an infallible AI agent. “It wasn’t bad at the start,” Richardson says. “It’s gotten so much better as time has gone on.” 他还表示，网上疯传的 AI 得来速灾难往往被夸大了。白色城堡的策略侧重于渐进式改进，而不是等待一个万无一失的 AI 代理。“起初并不坏，”Richardson 说，“随着时间的推移，它已经变得好多了。”
Across the fast-food industry, the pendulum seems to be swinging back in the direction of AI-drive-thru adoption. In addition to Taco Bell and Dairy Queen’s planned expansions, McDonald’s announced this summer that it was once again testing AI-powered ordering, this time partnering with Google at five US locations, with a system that takes orders in English and Spanish. 在整个快餐行业，风向似乎又回到了采用 AI 得来速的方向。除了塔可钟和冰雪皇后的扩张计划外，麦当劳今年夏天宣布再次测试 AI 点餐，这次是与谷歌合作，在美国的五家门店进行测试，系统支持英语和西班牙语点餐。
Branded Hospitality recently partnered with Arc, a voice AI-drive-thru company that works with chains including Southern chain Jack’s and chicken chain Pollo Campero. AI drive-thru 1.0 was a flop, Schatzberg says. But now? “Companies have evolved, technology has evolved, and…” Branded Hospitality 最近与 Arc 达成了合作，这是一家为南方连锁店 Jack’s 和炸鸡连锁店 Pollo Campero 等提供服务的语音 AI 得来速公司。Schatzberg 说，AI 得来速 1.0 版本是失败的。但现在呢？“公司进化了，技术进化了，而且……”