Taco Bell to Expand Voice Ordering

Consumers making a late-night "run for the border" might soon find an artificial intelligence voice instead of a human taking their orders. Taco Bell's parent company, Yum! Brands, plans to expand its use of AI voice technology to hundreds of U.S. drive-thru locations by the end of the year.

"Tapping into AI gives us the ability to ease team members' workloads, freeing them to focus on front-of-house hospitality," Dane Mathews, Taco Bell's chief digital and technology officer, said in a statement. "It also enables us to unlock new and meaningful ways to engage with our customers."

Other fast food restaurants that have also begun piloting AI voice ordering technology recently included fellow Yum! Brands staple KFC, Wendy's, Panera Bread, and Hardee's and Carl's Jr. And earlier this summer, McDonald's decided to ditch the voice ordering technology it had been pilotting from IBM and is said to be looking to replace it with SoundHound AI's technology later this year.