Habla Español? Wendy's AI-powered drive-thrus will be bilingual in these states

The AI drive-thru revolution strikes again — and this time it’s bilingual.

Just a week after Taco Bell announced plans to roll out AI order-taking in drive-thrus at hundreds of its restaurants across the US, Wendy’s is bringing Spanish AI order-taking to 28 drive-thru locations in Florida and Ohio.

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These selected locations will be in areas with high Spanish-speaking populations. More than 22% of Florida residents speak Spanish at home.

AI isn’t exactly new territory for Wendy’s or other fast food brands. Wendy’s has been slowly rolling out its FreshAI, powered by Google Cloud’s large language model, since late last year. McDonald’s ended its current AI experiment in favor of human workers, but says it still sees AI in the chain’s future.

Here’s how the new Wendy’s system works: When customers pull up to the menu board, an AI voice will greet them and ask for their order. English will still be the default language for each customer. To take advantage of the new technology, customers need to say “Spanish” or “Español” — and the AI will change languages for the entire process.

The idea behind the technology is that when AI handles order-taking, the restaurant’s workers will be free to handle other tasks, Wendy’s noted. This results in more accurate orders — and a faster process overall — because orders aren’t taken by a multi-tasking employee.

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Critics argue that AI in drive-thrus could have several bad effects, including job loss, inaccurate orders because of accents or regional dialects, and struggles with unusual orders.

Indeed, AI would possibly struggle with questions about the menu or specialized requests, but in my own experience with AI drive-thru ordering at Bojangles, a North Carolina-based chicken and biscuits chain, I’ve found it to be significantly faster and more accurate than humans, especially if I request modifications to items.

Wendy’s said it plans to expand the technology in the future.