HISPI Project Cerebellum HISPI PROJECT CEREBELLUM

McDonald's Reportedly Ends IBM Partnership After AI Drive-Thru Ordering Errors at U.S. Locations

June 2, 2021

Between 2021 and mid-2024, McDonald’s piloted an AI-powered voice ordering system developed with IBM, based on its 2019 acquisition of Apprente. The system was deployed at over 100 U.S. drive-thrus but faced frequent misorders such as adding unwanted items, mixing adjacent lane orders, and ignoring corrections. In June 2024, McDonald’s confirmed it ended the IBM pilot, citing plans to explore alternative voice-AI vendors that prioritize trustworthy AI practices for better harm prevention.

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Alleged deployer
mcdonald's
Alleged developer
ibm
Alleged harmed parties
mcdonald's-customers

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/475

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.

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