Wendy’s is testing an AI (artificial intelligence) chatbot that can take verbal orders from customers who line up at its drive-thru kiosks. This is all part of its plan to reduce long wait times for customers and create a better experience overall. The tech giant worked with Google to build a custom chatbot on top of its existing large language model (LLM), which will no doubt be discussed at Google’s upcoming I/O event. The AI-based chatbot is congruous with Google’s larger strategy to move further into the space of AI, allowing companies to create custom models on their own data.
Wendy’s is a fast-food restaurant chain that began in 1969 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ohio. It became the world’s third-largest hamburger fast-food chain with 6,711 locations in the United States and 29 countries and territories as of April 2019. The chain is most known for its signature Frosty, the signature sandwich – the Baconator, and its loyalty program – the Wendy’s Rewards Program.
AI chatbot development is a growing field, with a lot of credit going to the Google team that worked to create the custom chatbot for Wendy’s. In particular, the tech giant’s head of artificial intelligence and research, John Giannandrea, has had a significant role in the development of the AI chatbot. A computer scientist, John Giannandrea has made it his mission to give machines language and speech recognition capabilities, which has opened up many new possibilities for companies like Wendy’s.
