Sherwood News

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

Would you like AIs with that?

8/1/24 10:51AM

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.

Chris Stokel-Walker

Bot bias

6/17/26

Companies are getting AI chatbots to smear their competitors

The race to influence AI chatbots is leading to some companies to adopt shady competitive tactics.

Tom Jones6/17/26

Prediction markets have, predictably, been given a boost by the summer of sports

Major platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket have seen huge upticks in users of late, thanks in no small part to what’s felt like a recent sporting smorgasbord, with major competitions across hockey, basketball, and soccer soaking up fans’ time (and spending, clearly) at the outset of summer.

While gaming industry groups may not like it, there’s been a huge change in the methods people are using to put money on the big games, with everyone from fortunate NYC bar owners, to a far less fortunate Spanish supporter, turning to prediction markets to try and turn their sports know-how into cold, hard cash.

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

2026 World Cup Reverses Seasonal Lull for Sports Betting Apps

According to a new report from Adam Blacker for apptopia, that shift might have been even more seismic than imagined in the wake of the NBA and NHL finals and around the 2026 World Cup kicking off.

South by Southwest Conference and Festivals

Gold Tesla Cybercabs are piling up, but they’re not picking up passengers yet

Low-volume production started in April. Now people are noticing them more and more in the wild.

Rani Molla6/15/26

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

6/15/26

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan6/15/26

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5