Fast food places such as Carl’s Jr., Checkers, and Taco Bell have implemented AI drive-thru assistants. Although they can comprehend basic orders and requests, they still have glitches.
A Taco Bell customer proved this after she dropped a swear word at the fast food restaurant’s AI drive-thru assistant.
“I made taco bell workers do their job,” Taco Bell customer Megan (@meganboeger) wrote in the text overlay, accompanied by a crying emoji.
After Megan drives up to the Taco Bell speaker, the AI greets her. “Hi. Welcome to Taco Bell. Do you have a four-digit code to enter to earn rewards points?” the AI asks Megan. After the content creator declines, it takes a few moments for the AI to generate its response.
“What can I get for you today?” it asks.
“Do you have anything that won’t make me [expletive] my pants?” Megan responds. Not knowing how to react, the AI says, “Let me get a team member to help you.” Then, she and her friend burst into laughter.
However, this isn’t the response Megan wanted. “Help i just wanted her to talk back to me like siri.”
The Day Dot reached out to Megan via TikTok comment and direct message, and to Taco Bell via press email. The video racked up over 539,000 views.
Can Taco Bell workers hear you speaking to the AI drive-thru assistant?
Some claimed workers can hear the customer and AI drive-thru interactions.
“They have a speaker in the back of the kitchen so they can hear what you order, too, so the whole staff heard this,” one viewer shared.
“They can hear you thru their speakers while you order and talk to the robot,” another echoed.
An alleged Taco Bell employee confirmed this, “I work at taco bell and the way this would’ve made my whole day.”
Furthermore, others claimed it was a method to avoid talking to the AI.
“I’ve heard if you use a curse word in Google it gets rid of the ai stuff. ig it also works on the speakers,” a fourth stated.
“AI doesn’t like swear words,” a fifth agreed.
Does AI hate profanity?
Earlier this year, a trick went viral on how to disable Google’s AI Overview: cursing.
Coined as “the profanity hack,” Mashable states this originated from Tumblr user flootzavut.
“Swear in your search request. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the most effective way I’ve found of it not doing the AI summary is just to add [expletive] [to] my search,” they suggested.
Subsequently, Tumblr users successfully tried this out. VICE explained that the AI doesn’t comprehend cursing and reverts to its original settings. Instead of a summary, it will provide links. Dropping the F bomb is the most effective.
However, a story made headlines last year about parcel firm DPD’s AI chatbot dropping the F-bomb, calling the company “the worst delivery firm in the world,” and insulting itself. As a result, DPD disabled its chatbot service until further notice.
@meganboeger help i just wanted her to talk back to me like siri 😭😭😭 #tacobell @tacobell ♬ original sound – megs
It is unknown whether this works for AIs in the drive-thru or customer service calls, but you can try it out.
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