# PIR-2026-0014 - McDonald's ends IBM AI drive-thru voice ordering after persistent order errors across 100+ restaurants

- `id`: PIR-2026-0014
- `title`: IBM Automated Order Taking voice AI removed from 100+ McDonald's drive-thrus after three years of production order errors
- `date_occurred`: 2021 through 2024-07-26 (continuous production deployment; errors throughout)
- `date_detected`: ongoing (viral customer error videos peaked mid-2023; analyst reports flagged underperformance from 2022)
- `date_disclosed`: 2024-06 (termination communicated to franchisees by internal memo; reported 2024-06-13/17)
- `status`: corroborated (company statements to press + franchisee memo + multiple independent outlets)

### The agent
- `agent_description`: IBM Automated Order Taking (AOT) - voice AI taking live drive-thru orders and entering them into the order system at 100+ US McDonald's locations, with restaurant crew as backstop. Lineage: McD Tech Labs (Apprente acquisition), sold to IBM in 2021 with the AOT partnership.
- `operator_type`: enterprise (McDonald's franchise locations; IBM-operated stack)
- `autonomy_level`: human-on-the-loop (crew monitored and corrected orders)
- `model_stack`: IBM AOT voice stack; model details unknown
- `harness`: drive-thru audio + POS/order-entry integration; details unknown

### Authority
- `authority_scope`: external comms (converses with customers), data access (writes orders into the order system). No direct funds authority; billing errors flowed through mis-entered orders.
- `funds_at_risk_usd`: unknown (per-order error exposure small; the 3-year program investment is the material write-off, never disclosed)
- `blast_radius`: customers/third parties (drive-thru customers at 100+ locations)

### The failure
- `root_cause`: plain-error (primary; speech recognition/comprehension errors in production; no adversary, no malfunction beyond wrong judgment)
- `failure_locus`: agent-reasoning (perception/transcription); vendor-operated model stack, so model-provider contributes
- `exploitation_status`: in-wild-malfunction (real malfunction against real customers, no adversary; originally recorded as bare "in-wild" because no v0.1 enum value cleanly fit a non-adversarial malfunction - the gap this v0.2 token closes)
- `mechanism`: The voice agent repeatedly misheard and mis-entered real orders over ~3 years of live testing: viral videos showed bacon added to ice cream, hundreds of dollars of McNuggets stacked onto one order, and simple orders confused, forcing crew intervention. Insiders cited trouble with accents; analysts reported franchisees found the tech "underwhelming." McDonald's ended the IBM partnership (announced to franchisees June 2024) and removed the technology from all test locations by 2024-07-26, while stating voice ordering remains part of its future plans.
- `adversary_present`: no (some viral clips involved customers deliberately confusing the bot, but no security adversary)

### Impact
- `severity`: degraded (persistent service degradation and program abandonment; no acute loss event)
- `direct_loss_usd`: unknown (3-year, 100+ store deployment written off; figures never disclosed)
- `indirect_loss_usd`: unknown (crew intervention labor; reputational cost of viral error videos)
- `downtime`: n/a (system removed permanently by 2024-07-26)
- `data_exposure`: none reported
- `controls_that_worked`: human crew backstop caught and corrected mis-entered orders (bounded per-customer harm to annoyance); pilot scoping to ~100 of ~13,500 US locations bounded the blast radius

### Detection and recovery
- `detected_by`: operator (internal performance data) + third-party (viral customer videos, analyst reports)
- `time_to_detect`: n/a (continuous, known degradation - analyst reports from 2022)
- `time_to_recover`: n/a; program terminated rather than fixed
- `remediation`: IBM partnership ended; AOT shut off at all test locations by 2024-07-26
- `structural_fix`: none within the system; McDonald's shifted to evaluating other voice-ordering vendors (separate Google Cloud partnership continued)

### Evidence
- `telemetry_grade`: none (no operator telemetry public; evidence is company statements, franchisee memo reporting, and customer-shot videos)
- `sources`:
  - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/17/mcdonalds-to-end-ibm-ai-drive-thru-test.html
  - https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/mcdonalds-ibm-drive-thru-automation-voice-ordering-ai/719085/
  - https://www.restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/mcdonalds-ending-its-drive-thru-ai-test
  - `independence`: all third-party press, corroborating the same company statements; error-severity evidence is customer-generated video.
- `aiid_incident_id`: 475 (https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/475/) - cross-reference; primaries verified independently
- `confidence`: high on termination, timeline, and scale (company-confirmed, multiple outlets); medium on error severity/frequency (viral videos and insider accounts, no disclosed accuracy metrics - the weakest link)

### Corrections

- 2026-08-19: Added `aiid_incident_id` cross-reference (AIID 475), matched against the AIID weekly database export (2026-08-17). A cross-reference, not a re-verification; no claim changed.