OpenAI GPT-4o breakthrough voice assistant, new vision features and everything you need to know

There is no specific timeframe when safety testing needs to be completed, one of the people familiar noted, so that process could delay any release date. GPT-4 brought a few notable upgrades over previous language models in the GPT family, particularly in terms of logical reasoning. And while it still doesn’t know about events post-2021, GPT-4 has broader general knowledge and knows a lot more about the world around us. OpenAI also said the model can handle up to 25,000 words of text, allowing you to cross-examine or analyze long documents. GPT-4 lacks the knowledge of real-world events after September 2021 but was recently updated with the ability to connect to the internet in beta with the help of a dedicated web-browsing plugin.

Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. After a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus questioned the lack of diversity in OpenAI’s board, the company responded. “The signed out experience will benefit from the existing safety mitigations that are already built into the model, such as refusing to generate harmful content. In addition to these existing mitigations, we are also implementing additional safeguards specifically designed to address other forms of content that may be inappropriate for a signed out experience,” a spokesperson said.

Another anticipated feature is the AI’s improved learning and adaptation capabilities. ChatGPT-5 will be better at learning from user interactions and fine-tuning its responses over time to become more accurate and relevant. Whether it’s managing thousands of customer queries at once or providing real-time support in a busy online classroom, ChatGPT-5’s enhanced efficiency will be a significant boon.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. However, some users have found it to be better at reasoning than GPT-4o and other rivals. During a demonstration of ChatGPT Voice at the VivaTech conference, OpenAI’s Head of Developer Experience Romain Huet showed a slide revealing the potential growth of AI models over the coming few years and GPT-5 was not on it. The same anonymous employee also said that OpenAI is going to give GPT-5 new capabilities.

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The GPT-4 model that allegedly “kinda sucks” has pushed OpenAI to 100 million weekly users and an $80 billion valuation. For now, Altman and the rest of us will just have to wait for GPT-5 to make our AI dreams come true. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said GPT-4, his company’s latest and greatest AI model, actually kinda sucks in an interview with Lex Fridman published on Monday.

Over a year has passed since ChatGPT first blew us away with its impressive natural language capabilities. A lot has changed since then, with Microsoft investing a staggering $10 billion in ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI and competitors like Google’s Gemini threatening to take the top spot. Given the latter then, the entire tech industry is waiting for OpenAI to announce GPT-5, its next-generation language model.

It’s important to note that various factors might influence the release timeline. Stuff like the progress of OpenAI’s research, the availability of necessary resources, and the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company’s operations. With more sophisticated algorithms, ChatGPT-5 is expected to offer better personalization. The AI will be able to tailor its responses more closely to individual users based on their interaction history, preferences, and specific needs. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, is the concept of machine intelligence on par with human cognition.

I think before we talk about a GPT-5-like model we have a lot of other important things to release first. „We will release an amazing model this year, I don’t know what we will call it,“ he said. „I think before we talk about a GPT-5-like model we have a lot of other important things to release first.“ BGR’s audience craves our industry-leading insights on the latest in tech and entertainment, as well as our authoritative and expansive reviews. The CEO conceded that OpenAI has “a lot of other important things to release” before they can talk about a GPT-5 model. He said he doesn’t know what OpenAI will call it, and it’ll be interesting to see if a rebrand is in the works.

A bumpy time for OpenAI (and the AI industry)

An artist and hacker found a way to jailbreak ChatGPT to produce instructions for making powerful explosives, a request that the chatbot normally refuses. An explosives expert who reviewed the chatbot’s output told TechCrunch that the instructions could be used to make a detonatable product and was too sensitive to be released. At the first of its 2024 Dev Day events, OpenAI announced a new API tool that ChatGPT will let developers build nearly real-time, speech-to-speech experiences in their apps, with the choice of using six voices provided by OpenAI. These voices are distinct from those offered for ChatGPT, and developers can’t use third party voices, in order to prevent copyright issues. OpenAI announced it’s rolling out a feature that allows users to search through their ChatGPT chat histories on the web.

Altman did not put a timeline for the release of GPT-5, but it is definitely on the way, and like the last time, OpenAI will, once again, hope to leave its competitors lagging by miles. Willison has uncovered the system prompt for the AI model, which claims it is based on GPT-4 and made by OpenAI. But as Willison noted in a tweet, that’s no guarantee of provenance because „the goal of a system prompt is to influence the model to behave in certain ways, not to give it truthful information about itself.“ GPT-5 will be more compatible with what’s known as the Internet of Things, where devices in the home and elsewhere are connected and share information. It should also help support the concept known as industry 5.0, where humans and machines operate interactively within the same workplace. First off, the timeline doesn’t quite line up with the recent interview on GPT-5 that OpenAI CTO Mira Murati gave just a few days ago.

Former OpenAI Staffer Says the Company Is Breaking Copyright Law and Destroying the Internet

She previously worked for HW Media as Audience Development Manager across HousingWire, RealTrends and FinLedger media brands. Prior to her experience in audience development, Alyssa worked as a content writer and holds a Bachelor’s in Journalism at the University of North Texas. But OpenAI is involved in at least one lawsuit that has implications for AI systems trained on publicly available data, which would touch on ChatGPT. OpenAI has said that individuals in “certain jurisdictions” (such as the EU) can object to the processing of their personal information by its AI models by filling out this form. This includes the ability to make requests for deletion of AI-generated references about you.

However, just because they’re not launching a Google competitor doesn’t mean search won’t appear. However, there was more than enough to get the AI-hungry audience excited during the live event including the fully multimodal GPT-4o that can take in and understand speech, images and video content, responding in speech or text. As for that $2,000 ChatGPT subscription, I don’t see regular ChatGPT users considering such a plan. However enterprise customers and app developers might pay more to access the best possible ChatGPT chatbot OpenAI can offer. The Information says the expensive subscription would give users access to upcoming products.

OpenAI announced a partnership with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to study how AI can be employed by scientists in order to advance research in healthcare and bioscience. This follows other health-related research collaborations at OpenAI, including Moderna and Color Health. After a delay, OpenAI is finally rolling out Advanced Voice Mode to an expanded set of ChatGPT’s paying customers.

OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) company led by Sam Altman, is reportedly preparing to release GPT-5, the next generation of its multimodal large language model, in the coming months. Because of the overlap between the worlds of consumer tech and artificial intelligence, this same logic is now often applied to systems like OpenAI’s language models. As a lot of claims made about AI superintelligence are essentially unfalsifiable, these individuals rely on similar rhetoric to get their point across. They draw vague graphs with axes labeled “progress” and “time,” plot a line going up and to the right, and present this uncritically as evidence.

• This would open up a ton of new applications, such as assisting in video editing, creating detailed visual content, and providing more interactive and engaging user experiences.
• Such integrations will expand the utility of ChatGPT-5 across different industries and applications.
• Willison also called into question the policy of LMSYS allowing anonymous AI language models on the site, wondering if the launch was a buzz-building marketing stunt.
• OpenAI has rolled out Advanced Voice Mode to ChatGPT’s desktop apps for macOS and Windows.

The one where the CEO teases other releases before GPT-5 rolls along, if it’s even called that. According to one of the unnamed executives who have tested GPT-5, the new language model is “really good” and “materially better” than the current versions of ChatGPT. Chat GPT-5 is very likely going to be multimodal, meaning it can take input from more than just text but to what extent is unclear. Google’s Gemini 1.5 models can understand text, image, video, speech, code, spatial information and even music. Each new large language model from OpenAI is a significant improvement on the previous generation across reasoning, coding, knowledge and conversation.

OpenAI’s CEO confirms the company isn’t training GPT-5 and ‘won’t for some time’

Its ChatGPT-integrated Plus Speech voice assistant is an AI chatbot based on Cerence’s Chat Pro product and a LLM from OpenAI and will begin rolling out on September 6 with the 2025 Jetta and Jetta GLI models. Earlier this year, OpenAI unveiled Sora, AI software that can create hyper-realistic one-minute videos based on text prompts. Sora is in the red teaming phase, where the company identifies flaws in the system.

This iterative process of prompting AI models for specific subtasks is time-consuming and inefficient. In this scenario, you—the web developer—are the human agent responsible for coordinating and prompting the AI models one task at a time until you complete an ChatGPT App entire set of related tasks. During a recent safety update, released to coincide with the international AI Seoul Summit, OpenAI said it would spend more time on assessing the capabilities of any new model before release, which could explain the lack of a date.

Murati didn’t refer to it by the name “GPT-5,” but certainly described it as a next-gen model. Currently residing in Chicago, Illinois, Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. Users can expect GPT-5 to drop sometime this year, according to Altman.

One source for the site stated that GPT-5 is „materially better,“ with the AI model being demonstrated in use for data and utility specific to his company. Given the growing advancement from competitors like the Gemini Ultra model and Claude 3 Opus, OpenAI is likely starting to feel the mounting pressure. However, as the CEO posted the strawberry summer image on X, others took to the social platform to detail another mysterious genAI product that’s in testing at the time of this writing on the open-source lmsys chatbot arena. The last time we saw a mysterious chatbot with superior abilities, we discussed a “gpt2-chatbot.” Soon after that, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4o. LLMs like those developed by OpenAI are trained on massive datasets scraped from the Internet and licensed from media companies, enabling them to respond to user prompts in a human-like manner. However, the quality of the information provided by the model can vary depending on the training data used, and also based on the model’s tendency to confabulate information.

OpenAI says Advanced Voice Mode might not launch for all ChatGPT Plus customers until the fall, depending on whether it meets certain internal safety and reliability checks. OpenAI has found that GPT-4o, which powers the recently launched alpha of Advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, can behave in strange ways. In a new “red teaming” report, OpenAI reveals some of GPT-4o’s weirder quirks, like mimicking the voice of the person speaking to it or randomly shouting in the middle of a conversation.

Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Denver Post, are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that the companies stole millions of copyrighted articles “without permission and without payment” to bolster ChatGPT and Copilot. Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it is bringing ChatGPT to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems. The ChatGPT integrations, powered by GPT-4o, will arrive on iOS 18, iPadOS 18 and macOS Sequoia later this year, and will be free without the need to create a ChatGPT or OpenAI account. Features exclusive to paying ChatGPT users will also be available through Apple devices.

While we are now starting to see feature add-ons to chatbots with generative AI — ChatGPT Canvas or Claude Artifacts are both good examples of this — those rumors often surround model changes. An update to a model is the equivalent of upgrading to a new operating system, going from iOS 17 to 18 or Windows 10 to 11, rather than a simple feature update. The next-generation iteration of ChatGPT is advertised as being as big a jump as GPT-3 to GPT-4.

With GPT-4 we saw a model with the first hints of multimodality and improved reasoning and everyone expected GPT-5 to follow the same path — but then a small team at OpenAI trained GPT-4o and everything changed. During his presentation on Wednesday Huet even suggested we’re going to see multiple sizes of OpenAI models in the coming months and years — not just one size fits all for ChatGPT and other products. In the world of artificial intelligence naming is still a messy business as companies seek to stand out from the crowd while also maintaining their hacker credentials. None of this is confirmed, and OpenAI hasn’t made any official announcements about ChatGPT’s GPT-5 upgrade. The company told ArsTechnica it doesn’t have a comment on the Business Insider story. But a spokesperson offered a snippet from Sam Altman’s interview I mentioned before.

One CEO who recently saw a version of GPT-5 described it as „really good“ and „materially better,“ with OpenAI demonstrating the new model using use cases and data unique to his company. The CEO also hinted at other unreleased capabilities of the model, such as the ability to launch AI agents being developed by OpenAI to perform tasks automatically. Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see how the upcoming OpenAI GPT-5 shapes up and the changes it could bring.

AVM is also getting a revamped design — the feature is now represented by a blue animated sphere instead of the animated black dots that were presented back in May. OpenAI is highlighting improvements in conversational speed, accents in foreign languages, and five new voices as part of the rollout. The startup announced it raised $6.6 billion in a funding round that values OpenAI at $157 billion post-money.

• Here’s a timeline of ChatGPT product updates and releases, starting with the latest, which we’ve been updating throughout the year.
• The point is the world is waiting for a big ChatGPT upgrade, especially considering that Google also teased big Gemini improvements that are coming later this year.
• As part of the deal, TIME will also gain access to OpenAI’s technology in order to develop new audience-based products.
• The company is still expanding the potential of GPT-4 (by connecting it to the internet, for example), and others in the industry are building similarly ambitious tools, letting AI systems act on behalf of users.
• The report also says the company could spend as much as $7 billion in 2024 to train and operate ChatGPT.

We know it will be “materially better” as Altman made that declaration more than once during interviews. As April 22 is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s birthday — he’s 39 — the rumor mill is postulating that the company will drop something big such as Sora or even the much anticipated GPT-5. Spokespeople for the company did not respond to an email requesting comment. / Sign up for Verge Deals to get deals on products we’ve tested sent to your inbox weekly.

Note that deleting a chat from chat history won’t erase ChatGPT’s or a custom GPT’s memories — you must delete the memory itself. New York-based law firm Cuddy Law was criticized by a judge for using ChatGPT to calculate their hourly billing rate. The firm submitted a $113,500 bill to the court, which was then halved by District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who called the figure “well above” reasonable demands. According to a report from The New Yorker, ChatGPT uses an estimated 17,000 times the amount of electricity than the average U.S. household to respond to roughly 200 million requests each day. Scarlett Johansson has been invited to testify about the controversy surrounding OpenAI’s Sky voice at a hearing for the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation. In a letter, Rep. Nancy Mace said Johansson’s testimony could “provide a platform” for concerns around deepfakes.

Throughout the last year, users have reported “laziness” and the “dumbing down” of GPT-4 as they experienced hallucinations, sassy backtalk, or query failures from the language model. There have been many potential explanations for these occurrences, including GPT-4 becoming smarter and more efficient as it is better trained, and when does gpt 5 come out OpenAI working on limited GPU resources. Some have also speculated that OpenAI had been training new, unreleased LLMs alongside the current LLMs, which overwhelmed its systems. ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI.

On the one hand, he might want to tease the future of ChatGPT, as that’s the nature of his job. Most agree that GPT-5’s technology will be better, but there’s the important and less-sexy question of whether all these new capabilities will be worth the added cost. He’s also excited about GPT-5’s likely multimodal capabilities — an ability to work with audio, video, and text interchangeably.

Yelps Assistant chatbot will do all the talking to help users find service providers

Other brands that are customer-centric (think Clutch, Chick-Fil-A, Dutch Bros) place a premium on face-to-face human interaction, and will likely look to balance technology while maintaining a human touch. McDonald’s told CBS MoneyWatch that it is ending its Automated Order Taker pilot, which used AI in drive-thrus to expedite orders. The fast-food giant, which launched the tech through a partnership with IBM in 2021, isn’t ready for now to deploy voice ordering across its restaurants.

The success rate, measured by order accuracy, on average is 85 percent and, in some cases, up to 95 percent. Upon adding the service, Casanova said the operator accesses a subscription program to use the AI. Casanova said voice AI can also increase order consistency and upsell items to guests. Presto, which began in 2008 by developing restaurant payment tablets, has moved into the drive-thru space with AI technology that can take orders. This newly redesigned experience makes it easier to join the waitlist and check yourself in when you’re at the restaurant, streamlining the process for diners while allowing the host to manage other front-of-house operations. “Our accuracy during the pilot, measured as the percentage of orders successfully handled by Wendy’s FreshAI without restaurant team member intervention, averaged 86% and we would expect the average to only to increase,” Spessard said.

Enjoy personalized recommendations, ad-lite browsing, and access to our exclusive newsletters. Small restaurants typically spend between INR 7,000-15,000 for photoshoots that cover around 70% of their menu, the FE report said. However, Ranjan added that AI will continue to play an important role for cataloguing for food as well as quick commerce business. Bear Robotics “Servi” robots are designed specifically for food delivery. We are constantly looking at how AI applications generally are performing in the industry, as well as other industries.

So it’s integrating Yelp’s maps, reviews, and other details in responses when people ask for restaurant recommendations. Yelp says the chatbot also works with other services like massage therapists, pet care, real estate, or financial services. Yelp Assistant, powered by large chatbot for restaurant language models from OpenAI, is available now in the iOS versions of its mobile app and will roll out on Android this summer. Existing customers will not experience an interruption to their service and will continue to receive technologies under their respective brands.

Visual Input and Customer Recommendation

They are the modern-day Secret Shopper program on steroids that makes us money rather than costs us SaaS fees. We get on average 30 detailed guest surveys a month which are 50 questions long and the platform gives us incredible insights into all areas of our guest journey and where we have opportunities to make adjustments. We can then track in real time the results of each decision and action taken to monitor impact. Their data analysts and scientists then compile detailed monthly reports that illuminate trends and track changes from changes made. Guests are reimbursed a max amount for their survey and receipt, and in the aggregate, they spend more than the reimbursement, thus the intelligence is free and we are actually up in revenue from these transactions overall. From self-service kiosks to drive-thru automation and customer service support, there is immense potential for conversational and generative AI solutions in the foodservice industry.

Perhaps the most visible and soon to be widely adopted are all kinds of kiosks for ordering food. The self-service machines have been around for more than a decade, but franchise owners such as Michaela Mendelsohn resisted the move for many years. Del Taco canceled its test contract with Presto Automation, according to the 10-Q, and a proprietary test of voice AI at McDonald’s in 2022 failed to reach an acceptable level of order accuracy. Applebee’s, Chili’s and Red Lobster, which accounted for 88% of Presto’s revenue in the back half of 2023, informed the company that they did not intend to renew contracts. Two of those contracts expire on June 30, and one, accounting for 12% of Presto’s revenue, expired on Feb. 29, according to the company’s 10-Q released last month. Faced with mounting debt and falling revenue, Presto Automation is betting big on drive-thru AI.

Aniai’s Alpha Grill was a recipient of the show’s famed Kitchen Innovations award last year. The semi-autonomous burger grill simultaneously cooks both sides of a hamburger patty. The South Korean company Aniai returned to the show this year and nabbed another kitchen innovation award for its use of advanced AI and robotics. The company believes it can solve throughput and labor shortages for quick-service burger joints, especially chains with large digital and drive-thru businesses. The company recently opened its first North American showroom in Midtown Manhattan. Aniai said they are working with “several notable” North American fast-food brands.

The test has been taking place in about 100 McDonald’s locations since IBM and McDonald’s first formed their partnership in October 2021. The goal of the test was to determine if an automated voice ordering solution could simplify operations for employees while also creating a faster, better experience for customers. Since, however, surveys have yielded underperforming metrics, including a 2022 report from BTIG showing that voice ordering accuracy was in the low 80% range.

We are excited to harness the power of Craftable’s Inventory Management System at Savory. This technology offers real-time tracking, automated reordering, cost analysis, and vendor management, all working together to streamline our restaurant’s inventory control. Partnering with Craftable enables us to advance our pursuit of scalable, cutting-edge technology, amplifying sales while delivering bottom-line results.

On September 12, the company announced an OpenTable integration, which includes the option to book a reservation on OpenTable, by phone, through the AI voice agent. By Mia Sato, platforms and communities reporter with five years of experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people who use their tools. It can also be leveraged to streamline the hiring process, which is particularly important in the restaurant industry where high turnover rates and a labor shortage can make it challenging to find the right employees. AI can automate job postings, screen resumes, and even conduct initial interviews with candidates. The restaurant utilises some of the most innovative tech currently available to fully automate all its fry and grill stations which guests can even peek in on as the robots prep their custom orders, in a „pseudo-museum experience.“

S.F. Chronicle debuts AI-powered restaurant recommendation bot

Keep an eye out for even more ways we’re leveraging AI and new engaging content, like AI stitched videos using real photos, videos, and information from Yelp, to help you find the right business for your needs. Here’s to the next 20 years of innovation, connection, and community on Yelp. The Yelp Fusion AI API represents a significant advancement in our mission to connect people with great local businesses, by opening new possibilities for these connections to be made seamlessly both on and off of Yelp. Wendy’s FreshAI, a partnership with Google Cloud, used drive-thru chatbots to shave 22 seconds off service times at a Columbus, Ohio test site compared to the local market average.

Several brands are, indeed, testing the AI drive-thru ordering landscape with a variety of tech partners, indicating a growing curiosity about its potential. Checkers and Rally’s, Jersey Mike’s, CKE, White Castle, and Del Taco are other examples of chains testing the technology. Last year, Wendy’s began testing Google’s drive-thru chatbot and started offering the option to franchisees.

Chowbot, a question-answering bot, uses reviews from the Chronicle’s Food & Wine team to provide information about restaurants in the Bay Area. The bot is based on a database of hundreds of reviews covering a wide range of restaurants. He is not focused yet on selling the service specifically to St. Petersburg businesses, but expects to engage in a local word-of-mouth campaign at some point. He is also not concerned that the bot will replace humans, predicting that the revenue growth will create new opportunities. If the restaurant ran a promotion for “National Pepperoni Pizza Day,” the bot could advertise the promotion then track all comments and pictures, absolving the restaurant of having to perform these functions manually. The bot responded, in text, “I’m so sorry to hear you are going through this,” and then sent a prompt to schedule an appointment.

In 2021, operating “as lean as possible” when reopening after the pandemic, Owens tried Slang, which was brought to his attention by his account manager at OpenTable. Jasmine sounds a little sad as she tells me that unfortunately, the San Francisco–based Vietnamese restaurant doesn’t have outdoor seating. Modern Restaurant Management would like to store your above information when you create an account.

Patric Knapp, VP of Operations, Bobby’s Burgers by Bobby Flay

Another instance involved a customer being billed $222 for multiple McNugget meals due to AI miscommunication. In addition to Yelp Assistant, today we’re introducing other updates to help you connect with service pros. Yelp’s new Project Ideas, accessible through the ‘Projects’ tab, provide recommendations to help inspire your next home upgrade, alleviate decision paralysis, and make it easy to request quotes from service pros in your area. This summer, we’ll refine Project Ideas with predictive analysis to provide you with more personalized Project Ideas, recommendations and checklists. Plus, service pros will find business owner inbox enhancements that help them quickly respond to and secure jobs.

For example, data analytics can help restaurants determine the most popular menu items among certain demographic groups or at specific times of day. This information can then be used to adjust the menu, optimize inventory management, and create targeted marketing campaigns that drive sales and increase customer loyalty. Furthermore, many fast-food chains are exploring artificial intelligence to boost sales and efficiency, particularly in drive-thru operations. Presto Automation provides AI voice recognition technology to several major chains, including Checkers, Rally’s, Del Taco, Carl’s Jr., and Hardee’s, as well as digital ordering tablets to casual dining restaurants. However, Presto is facing financial challenges, including a $6 million debt repayment, and has lost some key clients. CHOP5 is embracing third-party delivery companies to help increase guest convenience and labor efficiencies.Q.What technologies are you exploring this year and why?

Furthermore, by focusing on objective qualifications like experience and education, AI can help eliminate bias and ensure that the best candidates are selected. By simplifying the hiring process, restaurant managers can spend more time on other critical tasks, such as customer service and menu development, ultimately leading to a better overall experience for customers. Restaurants like Taco Bell, Chipotle, and Domino’s, are beginning to implement AI-powered voice and chatbots to take orders, make recommendations, and answer frequently asked ChatGPT App questions customers may have. Furthermore, the value of bolstering customer service without having to hire additional staff makes this a cost-efficient, enticing option for restaurants of all shapes and sizes. Third-party partners can now integrate Yelp’s trusted content into their products to create conversational AI experiences with the new Yelp Fusion AI API. For years, Yelp Fusion has enabled consumers to access Yelp’s high quality information on local businesses in other places across the web, on mobile and in cars and homes.

Presto’s AI voice recognition, though advanced, still requires human intervention for order input and accuracy, managing only 30% of orders independently. One potential reason for the end of the partnership could be the accuracy of AI orders. Customers reported a variety of errors at McDonald’s drive-thrus, including receiving an ice cream cone topped with bacon and being charged for nine sweet teas instead of a single hash brown, sweet tea, and Coke.

Bloomberg reported that part of this deal involved a chatbot named “Ask Pickles,” which employees could utilize for tasks like cleaning ice cream machines. Meanwhile, Google has already partnered with Wendy’s to test AI in drive-thrus, a trial that has grown since its inception last year. Part of the blame, Levi said, “has to go onto IBM.” There are a lot of other partnerships, he said, that seem to be performing well in the fast food industry.

The best Presidents Day deals you can already get

It knew innovation is the life blood of growth and that the role of technology was the way to grow in the future,” Mathews said. Yum! began developing and testing the technology about two years ago, according to Taco Bell’s Chief Digital and Technology Officer Dane Mathews. Big brands operating locally On a similar note brands will be looking to drive that emotional connection with a „local“ feel despite being a regional/national brand – it’s a trend that is on the upswing. Getting involved with local community events, with local management, will become an even bigger focal point for many brands in the space.

But those results are culled together from an automated analysis of internet entries—including tons of Reddit pages. As such, it would appear (according to Calgie) that London Redditors are writing rave reviews of an oft-criticized steak restaurant chain, in an effort to drive tourists there and away from other locations. AI-powered delivery systems are being developed to optimize delivery times and routes.

With AI doing the initial heavy lifting, employees have more time on their hands to focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience. They can ensure that customers’ orders are carefully prepared, the restaurant is clean, and diners’ needs are met. With this tool called Sous Chef [an AI chat assistant], we give them really easy insights on three, four or five things you should really consider or pay attention to, or change or factor in as you think about your operations. It could be things like what to put on menus for concepts that are very popular in your zip code, how to think about inflation trends, how to think about pricing. I wouldn’t say it’s quite like having a data scientist on staff, but you start to see early signals. McDonald’s struck a deal with Google in December of last year to create a chatbot called “Ask Pickles” that would be able to train employees on issues such as how to clean restaurant equipment.

Drive-Thru Ordering Evolves as QSRs Leverage AI Chatbots

With the press of one button, Happy Joe’s will know what each food item costs at every restaurant location. For example, they will be able to quickly see what the food cost is for different sizes of pizza. This saves Happy Joe’s a lot of time, helps track everything in one place, and better manages items that are variable and change weekly. AI-driven systems can adjust ChatGPT pricing in real-time based on various factors such as demand, time of day, day of week and even weather conditions. It’s too early to understand how customers will react to dynamic pricing at restaurants but, at a minimum, AI can make those pricing decisions easier. Miami-based Xina is a startup offering a voice ordering chatbot tailored for restaurants and hotels.

Predictive metrics can also provide insights into busy periods and popular menu items, helping managers make better decisions and optimize staffing and resources during peak times. Furthermore, AI can be an invaluable tool in helping restaurants inform pricing strategies and optimize revenue. By analyzing historical demand and sales data, AI can help identify pricing trends and opportunities for promotions or discounts. For example, if a particular menu item is not selling as well as expected, AI can suggest lowering the price to increase demand and avoid waste. Similarly, if a certain item is in high demand, AI can recommend raising the price to optimize for short-term revenue.

Apex’s lockers are designed for exterior use, moving the pickup of takeout and delivery orders outside the restaurant.

Just ask Chowbot, which has been fed our human-written and vetted guides, and it will provide a handful of tips for you. Chowbot, a new AI-powered tool, allows Chronicle readers to search for restaurant recommendations vetted by reporters and critics. This technology is proven to have some of the most comprehensive capabilities in the industry, fast and accurate in some of the most demanding conditions.

• Mason Smoot, McDonald’s USA chief restaurant officer, acknowledged some successes but emphasized the need for broader exploration of AI solutions.
• One tech trend Happy Joe’s is hopping on in 2024 that others should follow along is robotic pizza making.
• Following the trailblazing examples of Starbucks, McDonald’s Monopoly, Costa Coffee and Dunkin‘ Rewards, gamification and digital collectibles are redefining loyalty programs.
• AI can also be used to understand trends, which helps QSRs plan their inventory and staffing.
• Applebee’s, Chili’s and Red Lobster, which accounted for 88% of Presto’s revenue in the back half of 2023, informed the company that they did not intend to renew contracts.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. Many AI voice agents I called asked me to wait as they were conjuring an answer, or simply remained statically silent before replying. They also exhibited nondeterministic behavior; as soon as a conversation veered off script—I changed my mind about a reservation or asked a relatively vague question—the AI assistants stumbled. “We would receive calls for basic questions that can be found on our website.” To solve this issue, after shopping around, Ho found that Maitre-D was the best fit. Bodega SF became one of the startup’s earliest clients in May, and Ho even helped the founders with trial and error testing prior to launch.

The fast food giant said it had decided to retire the AI-powered voice-ordering system, launched in partnership with IBM in 2021, after a “thoughtful review”. The restaurant industry’s experiments with AI have led to fears around how staff could be replaced by their robot co-workers. But in this case, the replacement of labor isn’t contingent on AI at all — companies just need a workforce somewhere else that they can hire for cheaper. Because of how AI has evolved, Shukla said the company was comfortable with beginning drive-thru operations in early 2023, and has been piloting it with a few brands, such as the Italian concept Fazoli’s, which has 210 stores. With the advancements in AI, Shukla said the drive-thru systems are able to have natural and fluid conversations with guests. When a company implements ConverseNow, the onboarding process usually takes four to 12 weeks, depending on menu complexity and existing POS technology.

He explained that onboarding would be available but that it wouldn’t be necessary for most businesses. Kraeger’s solution is EatDrinkLocals, an AI-powered platform that uses a chat bot for restaurants. He has about 800 users – mostly developers to whom he’s been selling for the past eight months – from his current beta phase and expects to officially start selling it to restaurants next week. Ghai and his family operate 180 Burger Kings, Taco Bells and Popeyes chicken restaurants across the state, and one of the first things they did after the law took effect April 1 was to start capping workers’ hours to avoid overtime pay. Also, they’re closing some outlets a little earlier, and opening others a bit later to avoid paying workers for less profitable periods.

• Based on a prompt for activities focused around hiking and cultural experiences, the chatbot gave multiple suggestions for visits in and near Vancouver.
• And unlike Gemini — which has a direct connection to Google Flights — Meta AI does not have as reliable of a connection to flight information, based on a Skift test.
• Pilot programs run by McDonald’s and others thus far often have backed up the AI technology with an employee, like the Wizard of Oz man behind the curtain.
• Kraeger’s solution is EatDrinkLocals, an AI-powered platform that uses a chat bot for restaurants.
• Upon adding the service, Casanova said the operator accesses a subscription program to use the AI.

Burger chain Wendy’s has also partnered with Google to develop AI-enabled, drive-thru tech. Based on a prompt for activities focused around hiking and cultural experiences, the chatbot gave multiple suggestions for visits in and near Vancouver. Unlike ChatGPT, the Meta AI chatbots are not yet capable of reading images (great for translating menus) or listening to audio (for translating speech). And unlike Gemini — which has a direct connection to Google Flights — Meta AI does not have as reliable of a connection to flight information, based on a Skift test. A Skift test in 2023 of Meta AI’s chatbot — based on the second version of its AI model — showed the tool was lacking, especially compared to competitors.

“By integrating our highly trusted and rich local data into Perplexity, we’re able to provide their users with reliable local search results,” says Chad Richard, SVP of business & corporate development at Yelp, in an email to The Verge. As The Verge’s David Pierce recently pointed out, how Perplexity mixes text and links when answering questions was already a selling point compared to other chatbots like Copilot, Gemini, or ChatGPT. Srinivas says that consideration is part of why the company eventually chose Yelp.

While I have been to London, I have never been to Angus Steakhouse, so I can’t speak to the quality of the food. It appears to have close to half a dozen locations around London and, while it’s an authentic local location, apparently some locals don’t really consider it a top-notch dining spot. “This is such a British thing to do,” said one commenter on Calgie’s post. While this particular slice of the AI pie has seen “unbelievable, crazy growth” according to Mathew Focht, CEO of the Emerging Fund, which specializes in restaurant tech, it’s not without challenges.