McDonald’s reintroduces AI at drive-thrus

At its global convention in Las Vegas in June, McDonald’s unveiled its strategy for the coming years. Among the announcements was one about the company’s AI platform ArchIQ and its order-taking voice assistant Archy, in limited testing, at a handful of drive-thrus in the US. In the summer of 2024, efforts of a similar system were shut down and the company subsequently told franchisees it was terminating its global order automation agreement, and no further phase was communicated.