The next time you pull up to a McDonald’s drive-thru, the voice taking your order may not be human. McDonald’s is testing a new AI-powered system called ArchIQ at five U.S. locations. The company has not said where those restaurants are located. The voice assistant, nicknamed Archy, can take drive-thru orders and has shown it can handle both English and Spanish.

For anyone who has repeated “no pickles” into a speaker box more than once, this could sound helpful. However, if you remember McDonald’s last AI drive-thru experiment, you may also wonder whether your burger order could somehow turn into a bag full of surprise McNuggets.

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WOULD YOU EAT AT A RESTAURANT RUN BY AI? 

What is McDonald’s AI drive-thru?

ArchIQ is McDonald’s new AI system for restaurants. It can take drive-thru orders and also help with operations behind the scenes.

In a post on X, McFranchisee, an anonymous McDonald’s franchisee account, said the system is currently in five test stores and has processed more than one million transactions. The account also said about 90% of orders were completed without a human stepping in. That number sounds promising. Still, McDonald’s has not confirmed a nationwide launch date. For now, this remains a limited test.

The system also appears to connect with a bigger McDonald’s plan called “McDonald’s > NEXT.” CEO Chris Kempczinski described the strategy as a way to bring in more customers and improve restaurant productivity. The plan also includes menu changes, restaurant redesigns, technology upgrades and more focus on hospitality.

Why McDonald’s is testing AI ordering

Drive-thrus can get chaotic fast. Someone changes an order after the total appears. A child calls out from the back seat. Road noise makes the speaker hard to hear. Then the driver remembers the extra sauce after everything has already gone through. That is the type of pressure McDonald’s wants AI to handle.

If ArchIQ works well, it could help restaurants move cars through the line faster. It may also reduce mistakes during busy hours. Workers could then focus more on preparing food, handling payments and helping customers who need a real person.

ArchIQ also appears to have a management role. In the same X post, McFranchisee described Archy as a tool that could alert managers to bottlenecks or other issues before they slow down operations. 

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McDonald’s tried AI drive-thru ordering before

This new test follows McDonald’s earlier AI drive-thru experiment with IBM. That program involved more than 100 restaurants. McDonald’s ended the test in 2024 after customers complained about order accuracy. Some mistakes also went viral, creating an embarrassing moment for McDonald’s and raising questions about whether the technology was ready for the drive-thru. Customers reported wrong items, strange quantities and other order mix-ups. That history is why this new test will get extra attention.

This time, McDonald’s is working with Google technology. McFranchisee also claimed every McDonald’s in the U.S. is getting Google Edge Cloud hardware in anticipation of the rollout. McDonald’s seems to believe the newer system can perform better than the last one. The real test will come when regular customers use it during real drive-thru rushes.

How McDonald’s AI drive-thru could help customers

If McDonald’s gets this right, the most obvious benefit is speed. An AI ordering system does not get tired during a long shift. It may also help more customers order in the language they prefer. That could make a busy drive-thru feel less frustrating, especially during breakfast or late-night hours.

The system may also ask clearer follow-up questions and catch missing details before the order reaches the kitchen. That would be a win for customers who want to get in, get their food and get on with the day.

The biggest problem with AI drive-thru orders

The biggest concern is accuracy. AI can still misunderstand people. That gets frustrating fast when you are trying to grab lunch between errands or get your kids fed from the back seat. A wrong order wastes time. It also puts workers in the position of fixing a mistake the machine made.

There is also the customer service side. Some people like hearing a real person at the speaker. Others may find an AI voice cold or annoying, especially if the system gets confused.

Then there is the privacy question. If an AI system takes your order, customers may wonder what gets collected, how long it is kept and who can access it. McDonald’s has not publicly explained those specifics for this current ArchIQ test.

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How to avoid AI drive-thru mistakes

Before you leave the drive-thru, take a moment to check the order screen. Make sure the items match what you said. Listen when the system repeats your order. Keep your receipt until you confirm the food is right.

Also, avoid sharing extra personal details at the speaker box. Your order should only require your food choices and payment.

If the AI gets confused, ask for a crew member. You do not need to keep going back and forth with a machine over fries.

What this means for you

For now, you probably will not notice a change at your local McDonald’s. The ArchIQ test appears limited to five U.S. restaurants, and the company has not said when it could expand.

Still, this gives customers a preview of where fast food may be heading. AI could soon play a bigger role in how restaurants take orders and manage the kitchen. That may speed up the line, though it could also make the experience feel less personal.

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Kurt’s key takeaways

McDonald’s clearly wants AI to play a bigger role in its restaurants. From a business point of view, the idea makes sense. Shorter drive-thru lines could help franchisees and customers. Better restaurant data could also help managers fix problems faster. But I still want the human backup. Food orders can be messy because people are messy. We change our minds. We talk over each other. We forget the extra ketchup until the last second. AI may handle much of that one day. For now, I would treat it like any busy drive-thru interaction. Speak clearly. Check the order. Do not pull away until you know your food is right.

Would you trust an AI voice to take your McDonald’s order, or do you still want a real person on the other end of the speaker? Let us know by writing to us at Cyberguy.com

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Midjourney CEO David Holz just showed off the company’s first hardware product and plans to build a San Francisco spa, which he admitted is a bit different from the “cat pictures” produced by its AI image generator. Dubbed The Midjourney Scanner, it’s an ultrasound-based full-body scanner that uses a ring of sensors to capture vertical slices of the inside of your body, looking at the composition of your muscle, fat, bone, and organs to start. Holz said ideally, you could do this once a year or every single day, as it “aims for image quality comparable to MRI in many ways.”

He mentioned that one way he’d like to use it would be to see how his body changes in response to diet and workout changes, saying, “I’m not the most measured man on Earth yet, you know, but maybe I want to have that daily [measurable information].” A set of job listings advertises the company’s goal as trying to “build and launch the world’s first full-body ultrasound CT scanner, ultimately bringing safe, fast, and high fidelity preventative scanning to billions via a magical spa experience.”

The Midjourney Scanner was developed in a partnership with ultrasound tech company Butterfly Network, which said it uses “40 Butterfly Ultrasound-on-Chip imaging modules per system.”

The scanning process starts with stepping onto a platform that drops down into the water on rails through a ring of thousands of transducers that create ultrasonic waves. It then records the ripples passing through your body to analyze them and create detailed 3D images. The scan takes about 60 seconds. Holz said about a dozen people have been scanned so far.

It starts by stepping into a shallow pool of golden light. You then begin to descend into the water. Your body passes through a ring of underwater sensors, each acting like a dolphin, using its echolocation. The sensors send ultrasonic sound waves through your body from every angle. With enough waves, and enough angles, we form an image of what’s happening inside your body.

It combines those sensors with two petaflops of processing power. But after watching the livestreamed reveal, I’m still unclear on what Midjourney’s AI image generation tech exactly has to do with the Midjourney Medical effort, beyond an alternative business for otherwise-unused AI compute.

Holz hopes to put 10 of the scanners into a Midjourney Spa location in San Francisco’s Union Square that will open before the end of 2027 and offered to scan the hands of attendees at its launch event. The Midjourney Spa will have a gym, saunas, and cold plunges to go along with the hot tub–equipped scanning rooms where visitors will get into the water to be scanned.

He did mention that various medical applications would require FDA clearances, but for now, Midjourney Medical says it’s working on “body composition maps” that don’t require the same level of clearance as diagnostic imaging. It also says the “library of scans” users create can be shared with doctors, AI health tools, or others, and that, “We take data privacy seriously — more details on our data policies will come as we get closer to launch.”

Holz suggested that eventually these scans could become better than an MRI, without radiation, powerful magnets, or other complicating factors, to get a look at what’s going on inside people’s bodies “real fast.” In response to a question, he imagined a future where the FDA had a class of devices to look at “weird” things and allowed people to “just try to get as much data as we can.”

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is taking on some of the world’s largest technology companies, announcing Monday that Britain will ban children under 16 from using major social media platforms — including TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube — and impose hefty penalties on companies that fail to keep minors off their services.

The restrictions, expected to take effect early next year, would also apply to Instagram, Facebook and X. Messaging services such as WhatsApp and Signal, as well as YouTube Kids, would be exempt.

Starmer said he is prepared to confront resistance from technology companies and acknowledged some teenagers will try to circumvent the rules, but argued the government has a responsibility to act.

“Every parent can see it with their own eyes. Social media is making children unhappy,” Starmer, who has two teenage children, told reporters. “I’ve heard first hand from families crying out for change and we will do right by them.”

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The move places Britain at the forefront of a growing international push to limit children’s access to social media. Australia last year became the first country to prohibit children under 16 from holding social media accounts, while Canada, Brazil and Indonesia have introduced or proposed similar age-based restrictions. France, Spain, Denmark, Thailand and South Korea are among others studying or developing similar approaches.

Under the British plan, platforms that fail to take reasonable steps to prevent kids under-16 from accessing their services could face multimillion-dollar fines. Starmer said enforcement efforts would be directed at technology companies rather than the children themselves.

The decision follows a public consultation that drew 116,000 responses from parents, children and the tech industry — the second-highest response total for a government consultation since one on same-sex marriage in 2012.

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More than 90% of respondents supported an under-16 ban, according to the government.

A YouTube spokesperson warned Monday that a blanket social media restriction could “push kids out of such curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less-safe services.”

The U.S. Embassy in London warned that any regulations should be narrowly tailored and not infringe on free speech protections, while also expressing concern about additional burdens on American technology companies.

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Starmer said he expected to discuss the issue with President Donald Trump and other world leaders at the G7 summit in France that starts Monday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.