LLMMedium
McDonald's Reportedly Ends IBM Partnership After AI Drive-Thru Ordering Errors at U.S. Locations
- Occurred
- Jun 2, 2021
- Published
- Jun 18, 2024
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
Between 2021 and mid-2024, McDonald's reportedly piloted an AI-enabled voice ordering system that was developed with IBM and based on its 2019 acquisition of Apprente. It was reportedly deployed at at over 100 U.S. drive-thrus. Social media posts alleged 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.
Developers
- IBM
Deployers
- McDonald's
Harmed parties
- McDonald's customers
Tags
- response
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: AI voice ordering system failures caused operational issues but no physical harm or major financial loss.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8