AI-Powered Taco Bell Drive-Thru Reportedly Disrupted by Viral Prank Ordering 18,000 Water Cups

August 29, 2025

An AI-powered drive-thru at Taco Bell was reportedly disrupted by a viral prank involving 18,000 water cup orders. The incident highlighted the need for robust governance and oversight of AI systems to prevent such incidents in the future. As videos showing repeated misinterpretations by the AI spread, frustration among customers and operational disruptions increased at participating locations. HISPI Project Cerebellum encourages individuals interested in shaping the future of safe and secure AI practices to join us and help map, measure, and manage such incidents.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.646, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.637, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 6.1 — similarity 0.633, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: taco-bell
Alleged developer: taco-bell, omilia
Alleged harmed parties: taco-bell-customers

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1274

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.