Sherwood News

Taco Bell is adding artificial intelligence to 100s of drive-thrus

Would you like AIs with that?

8/1/24 9:51AM

Depending on where you live, the next time you pull in to get a Cheesy Roll Up or Crunchwrap Supreme, you might be telling your order to a robot rather than an actual human being.

Burrito bots

Yum! Brands, Taco Bell’s parent company, yesterday announced plans to introduce AI voice tech at hundreds of the chain's US locations by the end of 2024, after successfully trialing the system at over 100 branches across 13 states. The fast food giant, which also owns Pizza Hut and KFC, said that the tech has already proved useful in easing employees’ workloads, improving order accuracy, and reducing wait times.

That third point isn’t exactly a massive problem for the burrito behemoth at the moment, though, especially compared to other major American “fast” food chains…

According to industry publication QSR Magazine’s 2023 Drive-Thru Report, Taco Bell’s already “digital-forward” drive-thrus are the speediest in the fast food game for the 3rd year in a row, with an average completion time (including taking the order, preparing the food, and closing the transaction) of just 4 minutes and 38 seconds. McDonald’s customers, by contrast, can expect to wait 6 mins and 53 secs for their meals, while Chick-fil-A scored lowest in the speed test, with an average wait time of 7 mins and 15 secs.

Although Chick-fil-A clocked in slower than the other chains reported by QSR, it did return the best accuracy score of the bunch: just 8% of customers received orders with errors, suggesting that the workers who always get Sundays off prioritize getting those sandwiches spot on, rather than slinging them out ASAP.

It will now be interesting to see whether Taco Bell’s new fleet of automaton order assistants will be able to move the needle on the chain’s current 85% accuracy rate.

Rani Molla

BofA doesn’t expect Tesla’s ride-share service to have an impact on Uber or Lyft this year

Analysts at Bank of America Global Research compared Tesla’s new Bay Area ride-sharing service with its rivals and found that, for now, it’s not much competition for Uber and Lyft. “Tesla scale in SF is still small, and we don’t expect impact on Uber/Lyft financial performance in ’25,” they wrote.

Tesla is operating an unknown number of cars with drivers using supervised full self-driving in the Bay Area, and roughly 30 autonomous robotaxis in Austin. The company has allowed the public to download its Robotaxi app and join a waitlist, but it hasn’t said how many people have been let in off that waitlist.

While the analysts found that Tesla ride-shares are cheaper than traditional ride-share services like Uber and Lyft, the wait times are a lot longer (nine-minute wait times on average, when cars were available at all) and the process has more friction. They also said the “nature of [a] Tesla FSD ‘driver’ is slightly more aggressive than a Waymo,” the Google-owned company that’s currently operating 800 vehicles in the Bay Area.

Apple AI was MIA at iPhone event

A year and a half into a bungled rollout of AI into Apple’s products, Apple Intelligence was barely mentioned at the “Awe Dropping” event.

Jon Keegan9/10/25

Jon Keegan

9/10/25

Oracle’s massive sales backlog is thanks to a $300 billion deal with OpenAI, WSJ reports

OpenAI has signed a massive deal to purchase $300 billion worth of cloud computing capacity from Oracle, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report notes that the five-year deal would be one of the largest cloud computing contracts ever signed, requiring 4.5 gigawatts of capacity.

The news is prompting shares to pare some of their massive gains, presumably because of concerns about counterparty and concentration risk.

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

It’s the second example in under a week of how much OpenAI’s cash burn and fundraising efforts are playing a starring role in the AI boom: the Financial Times reported that OpenAI is also the major new Broadcom customer that has placed $10 billion in orders.

Exclusive | Oracle, OpenAI Sign Massive $300 Billion Cloud Computing Deal

Yesterday, Oracle shares skyrocketed as much as 30% in after-hours trading after the company forecast that it expects its cloud infrastructure business to see revenues climb to $144 billion by 2030.

Oracle shares were up as much as 43% on Wednesday.

Large companies have started to drop AI from their businesses

Census data shows drop in large companies using AI

AI appears to be everywhere, but that doesn’t mean big companies have fully embraced the use of the technology in their day-to-day business.

Claire Yubin Oh, Jon Keegan9/10/25

Jon Keegan

9/9/25

Report: Microsoft adds Anthropic alongside OpenAI in Office 365, citing better performance

In a move that could test its fraught $13 billion partnership, Microsoft is moving away from relying solely on OpenAI to power its AI features in Office 365 and will now also include Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 model, according to a report from The Information.

The move is a tectonic shift that boosts Anthropic’s standing, heightens risks for OpenAI, and has huge ramifications for the balance of power in the fast-moving AI field.

Per the report, Microsoft executives found that Anthropic’s AI outperformed OpenAI’s on tasks involving spreadsheets and generating PowerPoint slide decks, both crucial parts of Microsoft’s Office 365 productivity suite.

Microsoft will have to pay the competition to provide the services —Amazon Web Services currently hosts Anthropic’s models while Microsoft’s Azure cloud service does not, The Information reported.

OpenAI is also reportedly working on its own productivity suite of apps.

Microsoft to Buy AI From Anthropic in Partial Shift From OpenAI