Category: Service Industry AI

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  • Omio scales travel product development using OpenAI models

    Omio integrates OpenAI models across its engineering operations to accelerate travel product development and launch booking interfaces.

    The multimodal travel platform coordinates operations with over 3,000 transportation providers across 47 countries. Omio explicitly rejects the superficial addition of technology to outdated internal processes. The company’s CTO, Tomas Vocetka, requires all internal functions to completely redesign their operational execution frameworks from the ground up to operate as a native AI enterprise.

    OpenAI Codex integration

    Vocetka initiated the internal deployment by providing base ChatGPT access to the workforce, establishing a baseline familiarity with generative models before executing the primary technical integration.

    Omio subsequently embedded OpenAI Codex directly into its engineering operations, mandating its application across the entire software development lifecycle. Engineers currently apply Codex to preliminary research, architectural planning, active coding, automated testing, code reviews, and ongoing system maintenance.

    The engineering division constructs custom internal connectors to link proprietary data environments directly with these tools. This setup allows developers to bypass basic information retrieval and proceed directly to active task execution within their integrated development environments.

    Vocetka categorises the initial ChatGPT rollout as a preliminary introduction, emphasising that Codex handles the actual production workload. The deployment execution matured beyond the technical divisions. Management actively expands the use of Codex into non-technical corporate functions across the wider organisation. This expansion ensures standard operational procedures adapt to the new capabilities introduced by the engineering team.

    Internal analysis indicates the technical effort required to build specific products now sits at approximately 20 percent of previous levels. Delivery timelines show corresponding compression. Projects demanding the attention of multiple developers over an entire fiscal quarter now require a single engineer operating for roughly one month.

    Faster cycle times allow the engineering teams to test experimental concepts and validate consumer demand with minimal resource expenditure. Management allocates capital and engineering hours with greater precision, relying on prototyping to eliminate unviable features before committing to full-scale production.

    Lowering the time and cost barrier for software creation enables quicker internal decision-making. The technical teams iterate on existing products at a much higher velocity, pushing updates and new interface elements to the live environment at accelerated pace.

    Conversational commerce built on real-time transport data

    Omio launched one of the earliest conversational travel booking interfaces in 2023 by connecting OpenAI models to its proprietary transportation inventory.

    The system processes natural language queries regarding complex multimodal routes. Travelers input natural language requests asking for the fastest route from Rome to Florence, or comparing flights and trains between Paris and Barcelona.

    Omio aggregates services spanning trains, buses, ferries, and flights. Legacy travel booking required users to navigate multiple websites, manually compare modes of transport, and independently aggregate itineraries across multiple providers. Omio replaces this fractured process with a unified interface capable of parsing consumer intent.

    The generative models analyse text inputs and ping the booking systems to construct viable travel paths. The application functions by grounding the model responses in live pricing and availability data. The architecture prevents the generation of travel options based on static or outdated training data. The resulting output provides consumers with directly bookable itineraries.

    Omio expanded its initial integration into a dedicated ChatGPT experience. This dedicated application directly accesses the global transportation network maintained by the company. By grounding the user interaction in verified data, the technical team ensures high-fidelity responses. Consumers receive highly-personalised journey options rather than generic travel advice.

    Omio defines this structural setup as a new category of conversational commerce. The AI operates as the primary interface layer mediating the interaction between the consumer and the underlying global transportation network. The company views this as a broader departure from legacy search-based interfaces toward native generative customer experiences.

    The deployment points to a future where travel planning relies entirely on interacting with intelligent systems connected directly to live transportation networks.

    Omio’s corporate policy explicitly mandates that human personnel retain full accountability for all deployed code and final business outcomes. Generative tools function strictly as acceleration engines for development, analysis, and decision-making.

    “The responsibility and accountability stay with people. AI helps us develop faster, analyse faster, and make decisions faster, but people stay in charge,” explains Vocetka.

    This governance structure prevents automated systems from independently executing irreversible changes to the booking infrastructure or the core multimodal routing algorithms. The combination of broad employee access to OpenAI tools and rigorous oversight models creates an environment prioritising both speed and systemic stability.

    See also: Mitigating vendor lock-in with Sakana AI Fugu multi-agent models

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  • SAP and Google Cloud deploy agentic commerce architecture

    SAP and Google Cloud are deploying agentic commerce architecture to automate multi-agent marketing and retail operations at enterprise scale.

    SAP research indicates 78 percent of businesses consider AI essential for retaining customers in 2026. However, the same data reveals fewer than two in five companies share customer data across customer experience (37%) or CRM (39%) platforms. 

    Addressing this structural data failure requires direct infrastructure intervention. SAP and Google Cloud expanded their partnership to build an agentic customer experience architecture, connecting data, AI, engagement, and commerce operations.

    The deployment relies on restructuring how AI interacts with backend commercial platforms. Most digital commerce infrastructures rely on fragmented APIs. SAP Commerce Cloud adopts the Universal Commerce Protocol to standardise data exchange among retailers, payment gateways, and autonomous agents. This framework allows software to independently execute the full retail sequence, spanning initial search, transaction processing, and post-sale resolution.

    Deploying the Universal Commerce Protocol

    Engineering teams integrating the Universal Commerce Protocol facilitate direct interactions between intelligent agents and commerce platforms. The standardisation lowers integration costs and accelerates onboarding into AI-driven channels.

    SAP plans to collaborate with Google to ensure merchant products surface organically across the Gemini application and Google Search, specifically incorporating AI Mode functionalities. Consumers interact with these interfaces while the backend architecture processes inventory checks, cart management, and payment processing without requiring retailers to rebuild existing infrastructure.

    SAP Commerce Cloud integrates Google Gemini capabilities to power a designated Shopping Assistant. Brands deploy the assistant directly to their consumers to facilitate chat, voice, and text engagements. State retention remains active throughout the complete shopping cycle. The deployment ingests live behavioural inputs, current warehouse capacities, and active marketing data to assemble distinct merchandise pairings, including full event configurations. By continuously refining recommendations, the application ensures high relevance and strict physical fulfilment capability.

    Enterprise systems often fail when promotional campaigns trigger demand that physical inventory cannot satisfy. Frontend interfaces failing to synchronise with backend warehouse systems frequently halt digital purchases. Users regularly click promotional emails, load the associated mobile application, and face sudden out-of-stock notices during checkout. Fulfilment updates experience severe delays, leaving support agents without a complete operational picture. SAP and Google Cloud engineered their joint solution to correct these specific systemic customer experience failures.

    Instead of managing disconnected points of contact, the architecture unifies the entire sequence. Traditional commercial setups require consumers to repeatedly input previously shared information. Support staff frequently lack access to unified records, preventing them from resolving issues efficiently. The integration targets these operational breakdowns, ensuring the system recognises the user and their precise context instantly across all digital properties.

    Bidirectional data flows

    Marketing execution demands highly accurate data pipelines. SAP Engagement Cloud partners with Google Cloud to formulate an autonomous multi-agent framework. The technical foundation relies on SAP Business Data Cloud Connect for Google BigQuery. The deployment relies on bidirectional, zero-copy data linking secured by strict administrative controls. Leaving vast data stores in place rather than duplicating them drops storage expenses and network latency.

    BigQuery ingests live variables like weather conditions, precise locations, and active advertising interaction rates. SAP Customer Experience solutions supply the internal behavioural context, tracking customer profiles, exact transaction histories, specific service interactions, and consented engagement records. SAP Engagement Cloud activates the combined intelligence, deploying autonomous agents to orchestrate personalised interactions throughout the customer lifecycle.

    Routing information through the Business Data Cloud while BigQuery handles the logic forces immediate inventory synchronisation. The Shopping Assistant actively queries live warehouse records before displaying any product. Software checks physical supply against consumer requests, verifying availability prior to making the suggestion.

    Generative execution in production environments

    Advanced generative models dictate the localised output of the marketing campaigns. Google Gemini models, specifically including the Nano Banana 2 iteration, provide specialised agentic skills. The models dynamically generate localised messaging, customised imagery, and campaign variations based on the exact specifications provided by the bidirectional data flow.

    The deployment upgrades standard text messages into immersive and interactive interfaces via Google Rich Communication Services. Advertising creatives evolve continuously based on incoming engagement data. The system processes the interaction, evaluates the response against the user profile, and instructs the Nano Banana 2 model to adjust the subsequent communication.

    Marketing departments achieve high efficiency by abandoning manual execution. Instead of configuring rigid campaign parameters, teams establish business goals and provide enterprise data access to the SAP Engagement Cloud. The autonomous agents coordinate the necessary steps, segmenting audiences based on Google BigQuery analytics and generating specific content variations through Google Gemini models.

    Evaluating the infrastructure impact

    Deploying the architecture restructures standard commerce operations. Consumers dictate their purchasing intent to search engines and conversational interfaces. The embedded AI agents process the intent, navigate the Universal Commerce Protocol connections, and complete the purchase directly against the enterprise backend.

    Retailers retain full ownership of the customer relationship despite the transaction occurring within a third-party environment. The architecture captures the consented engagement data, feeding the transaction history back into the SAP Customer Experience solutions. The system updates the localised customer profile, providing the Google Gemini models with fresh context prior to the next engagement cycle.

    The system continuously improves campaign performance without requiring direct human intervention. The multi-agent framework evaluates the success of a generated Rich Communication Services text message, adjusting the variables prior to the next automated dispatch.

    See also: Computer vision deployments drive retail productivity gains

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  • McDonald’s tests Google-backed AI drive-thru ordering system

    McDonald’s is testing a new AI system that can take drive-thru orders and support restaurant operations.

    The system, called ArchIQ and nicknamed “Archy,” was introduced during the company’s Worldwide convention, according to Restaurant Business. It is being tested at five McDonald’s locations in the United States, though the company has not named the restaurants involved.

    A video shared on X by a McDonald’s franchise owner showed the system greeting customers, processing order changes, displaying the final total, and asking customers to pull ahead for pickup.

    A demonstration shared on X by the franchisee account McFranchisee showed the system taking orders in English and Spanish. The account said the system has processed more than one million transactions, with about 90% of orders completed without being escalated to staff.

    The same account said ArchIQ can respond when repeat customers ask for their usual order. McDonald’s has not provided technical details on how that feature works.

    ArchIQ is being developed with Google. According to McFranchisee, McDonald’s restaurants in the US are receiving Google Edge Cloud blades ahead of the rollout.

    McDonald’s previous AI ordering test

    ArchIQ is McDonald’s latest AI test for drive-thru ordering. The company previously worked with IBM on an automated ordering system across more than 100 restaurants.

    McDonald’s ended that pilot in 2024 after customer complaints over order errors. The earlier IBM test was followed by customer videos showing incorrect orders, including one case in which the system reportedly added more than $250 worth of chicken nuggets.

    After ending the IBM partnership, McDonald’s said it would continue exploring voice ordering technology.

    Restaurant operations support

    ArchIQ is not limited to customer ordering. McFranchisee said it can monitor restaurants and alert managers to possible issues.

    According to McFranchisee, the system can alert managers if a freezer is down. It can also flag kitchen bottlenecks or other problems that need attention.

    McFranchisee described ArchIQ as both an ordering tool and a management-support tool.

    The test forms part of McDonald’s new growth plan, called “McDonald’s > NEXT.” The company said the plan is intended to improve restaurant operations and unit economics.

    McDonald’s reported a large digital customer base in its 2025 results. The company said systemwide sales to loyalty members across 70 markets rose 20% to nearly US$37 billion in 2025, while 90-day active loyalty users rose 19% to nearly 210 million at year-end.

    McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said in a press release that the strategy is aimed at the company’s next phase of growth and productivity.

    The company has also referenced restaurant upgrades and possible menu changes under the same plan, but has not provided detailed information.

    Automation and service

    In a company memo, Kempczinski said more of the customer journey is becoming automated, leaving fewer chances for guests to interact with crew members. He said that it raises the standard for hospitality when customers interact with staff.

    QSR Magazine’s 2025 Drive-Thru Report, citing Revenue Management Solutions, said drive-thru traffic remained negative month after month and hovered between minus 5% and minus 8% in 2025.

    Other fast-food chains have also announced AI-powered drive-thru ordering systems, including Taco Bell and Wendy’s.

    Jonathan Maze, editor-in-chief of Restaurant Business, told ABC News that companies often present drive-thru automation as a way to free employees for other tasks. The McFranchisee account said the system could reduce the need for workers to take orders in noisy drive-thru lanes.

    Some X users responding to the ArchIQ demonstration said they preferred interacting with human workers. Others supported a more automated ordering process.

    McDonald’s has not said when ArchIQ could be expanded beyond the five test locations. The company has said the system is intended to improve speed and accuracy while supporting customers and crew.

    The company’s AI drive-thru system remains in limited testing.

    (Photo by Boshoku)

    See also: Walmart’s AI workflows meet the realities of the balance sheet

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