McDonald’s has announced its acquisition of Apprente, a voice-based artificial intelligence technology that it plans to use for order taking at drive-thrus.
News.McDonalds.com
Apprente was established in 2017 and has worked to create voice-based platforms for complex, multilingual, multi-accent, and multi-item conversational ordering. McDonald’s expects the new technology to allow for faster, simpler, and more accurate order taking at drive-thrus. Apprente says its program uses “sound-to-meaning” technology as opposed to “speech-to-text,” which they claim is a better approach for customer experience, especially in noisy places or where customers may use poorly structured language.
“Building our technology infrastructure and digital capabilities are fundamental to our Velocity Growth Plan and enable us to meet rising expectations from our customers, while making it simpler and even more enjoyable for crew members to serve guests” said Steve Easterbrook, President and Chief Executive Officer, McDonald’s Corporation. “Apprente’s gifted team, and the technology they have developed, will form McD Tech Labs, a new group integrated in our Global Technology team that will take our culture of innovation one step further.”
