At a glance
- Company
- Presto AutomationRestaurant technology company
- Industry
- E-commerce and retail Presto’s customers are fast-food restaurants, which take orders from the public as shops do.
- Where and when
- United States. Statements made November 2021 – May 2023, order January 2025.
- Who produced the figures
- Official recordEverything on this page comes from the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s order and announcement. The findings were made under a settlement. Presto neither admitted nor denied them.
What happened
Presto sold Presto Voice to fast-food restaurants. It uses speech recognition to take drive-through orders. Presto’s shares were listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange from September 2022 until 2024.
The regulator found three problems in what Presto told investors between November 2021 and May 2023.
- The AI was not its own. Until September 2022, every Presto Voice unit in service ran on speech technology owned and operated by another company. Presto called it “our” technology and did not properly disclose how much it relied on the other company.
- People took the orders. In five filings between October 2022 and May 2023, Presto said Presto Voice “eliminat[es] human order taking”. The regulator found that people working off site, mainly in the Philippines and India, processed the vast majority of orders.
- The success rate counted the wrong people. Presto reported “automated order completion” and “non-intervention” rates of 95% to 99%. These rates counted orders completed without help from restaurant staff. They did not count the off-site agents.
The numbers
From the regulator’s order:
- Every order needed a person to enter it in the first version of Presto’s own system, deployed from September 2022.
- About 70% of orders still needed a person in a more advanced version piloted from June 2023.
- 95% to 99%: the “automated order completion” rates Presto gave investors.
- No fine. The regulator took into account Presto’s financial condition, its cooperation and the changes it made. Presto agreed to an order to stop breaking the rules.
What people inside knew
The order quotes Presto’s own executives:
- In January 2022 one wrote that “with HITL [humans in the loop], accuracy is not a major concern”.
- In October 2022 another said the company should not talk about an “automation rate with customers because it infers no supervision which isn’t true”.
- In January 2023 another said Presto was “telling investors Presto AI is running 95%+ accuracy without disclosing AI is doing NONE of the work and all orders are processed by humans”.
Presto had no process for drafting or checking its filings. The order says that nobody at the company was formally responsible for making sure they were accurate.
What happened next
Presto corrected its statements only after it learned of the investigation. In October 2023 it disclosed that off-site agents “enter, review, validate and correct orders”. In November 2023 it said that “over 70% of orders taken by our Presto Voice solution require human agent intervention”. In December 2023 it added that the 70% applied only to the few pilot locations. At most locations, which ran the original version, a person stepped in on 100% of orders.
What the case shows
- Ask what a success rate counts. Presto’s 95% left out the people who did the work off site.
- “Eliminates human work” is a factual claim. The regulator tested it against how the system really ran.
- Warnings from inside count. Executives raised the problem more than a year before the company corrected it.
What this says about the practices
Practices that were missing
- Claim only what your AI has been tested to do Presto said in five filings that its voice AI eliminated human order-taking. The regulator found that the first version of its own system needed a person to enter every order. Do next · Effort: low (days, one person)
- When AI output goes wrong, correct it fast and in the open Presto’s own executives raised concerns about the wording in 2022 and 2023. The company corrected its statements only after it learned of the regulator’s investigation. Do next · Effort: low (days, one person)