IBM’s artificial intelligence will replace McDrive employees.

To speed up the work of automated systems and voice orders, McDonald’s entered a strategic partnership with IBM to develop an artificial intelligence technology.

Being the leader in the development and implementation of artificial intelligence for business, IBM made an agreement to develop and expand its technology of Automated Order Taking (AOT) to the largest fast-food restaurants chain McDonald’s. Within this partnership IBM will take over McD Tech Labs, the technological subdivision of the company that supplies McDrive with new functions based on artificial intelligence, for example, voice recognition. 

“I think, IBM is the perfect partner for McDonald’s, considering their experience in creating solutions for servicing the clients and artificial intelligence-based voice recognition”, says Chris Kempczinski, McDonald’s CEO, according to CNBC.

Chris Kempczinski also noted that to implement the technology on a larger scale they’ll need one or two years. 

This agreement will expand McDonald’s options for providing even better client service. AOT technology development and testing McDonald’s restaurants have already showed significant benefits to providing service to the clients with the help of AI, while speech processing will help with the scale of the AOT technology on the market, providing a complete integration, including additional languages, dialects, and menu options. 

The purchase of McD Tech Labs will expand IBM’s current work on the development and implementation of solutions for client service based on AI with IBM Watson. Different fields, like financial services, healthcare, telecommunication, and retail business, use Watson to achieve certain business results.

AOT will continue to be integrated into the ecosystem of secure McDonald’s technologies. The deal is awaiting the approval of regulation bodies. It is estimated to be concluded in December, 2021. McD Tech Labs team will become a part of IBM’s Cloud & Cognitive Software subdivision. Though new technologies improve efficiency drastically, there are some worries that the technological breakthrough means many McDonald’s employees will be out of work. At this stage, the implementation of AI at McDrive is planned only in the USA. More on this can be found here.