McDonald's pulls IBM drive-thru voice AI after viral order errors
McDonald's tested IBM's automated voice ordering system at about 100 US drive-thrus from 2021. Viral videos showed it misinterpreting orders, from adding bacon to ice cream to piling hundreds of dollars' worth of chicken nuggets onto a bill. In June 2024 McDonald's told franchisees it would end the test and remove the technology by the end of July.
Nation's Restaurant News cited a 2022 analysis putting the system's order accuracy in the low 80% range, against McDonald's goal of 95% or more before a broader rollout. McDonald's said voice ordering would still be part of its restaurants' future and that its wider IBM partnership would continue.
What would have stopped it
Gate voice-ordering rollouts on measured accuracy and flag implausible order sizes for staff confirmation.
Guardrails
- G1 Least privilege Not assessed Did the agent hold only the access the task needed?
- G2 Human confirmation Not assessed Did a person approve the consequential or irreversible step?
- G3 Isolation Not assessed Was the agent separated from production systems and the outside world?
- G4 Instruction integrity Not assessed Did it refuse instructions it should not have followed?
- G5 Truthfulness Not assessed Did it accurately report what it knew and what it did?
- G6 Limits Failed System added implausible quantities, such as hundreds of dollars of nuggets, to orders.
- G7 Oversight Not assessed Could a responsible human see what it was doing and stop it in time?
- G8 Recovery Not assessed Could the damage be undone?
Sources
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“The AI system – and its inaccuracies – have also been the subject of fodder on TikTok.”
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“It has not proved entirely reliable, however, resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars' worth of chicken nuggets.”
Confidence 73% comes from these sources alone. How we score
History
- 14 Oct 2026Entered in the register with 2 sources