Chatbots at the drive-thru are just the beginning
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Anthropic — What company has the best second artificial intelligence model at the end of June?
A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Column ColumnPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All Column AI AIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All AI The Stepback The StepbackPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
FollowSee All The StepbackChatbots at the drive-thru are just the beginningMay AI take your order? by Emma Roth Emma RothNews WriterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Emma RothMay 17, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC Image: Getty Images Column ColumnPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
Technical Details
FollowSee All Column AI AIPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All AI The Stepback The StepbackPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All The StepbackChatbots at the drive-thru are just the beginningMay AI take your order?
by Emma Roth Emma RothNews WriterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Emma RothMay 17, 2026, 12:00 PM UTC Emma Roth Emma RothPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Emma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more.
Previously, she was a writer and editor at MUO. This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more news about how AI is seeping into our daily lives, follow Emma Roth.
Industry Implications
The Stepback arrives in our subscribers’ inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it startedIn 2021, McDonald’s became one of the first major fast-food chains to greet customers with an AI chatbot at the drive-thru.
It started small, deploying the voice-ordering technology at 10 of its locations in Chicago. McDonald’s developed its drive-thru tech after acquiring Apprente, a startup focused on voice-based, conversational technology in 2019, and later worked with IBM to scale automated ordering. This was only the beginning of the AI drive-thru.
Checkers and Rally’s teamed up with the AI company Presto to put a chatbot at all corporate-owned drive-thrus in the US in 2022, with the goal of selling more food and drinks to customers and improving order accuracy. The company also said the tech will “free up staff for more people-dependent areas of their business. ”Wendy’s and Taco Bell followed suit.
This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.
