‘I think I broke it:’ Man goes to Dairy Queen Texas and interacts with the AI ordering system. Then he asks for a 50% discount

A man with a beard and glasses sat in the driver’s seat of his car at a Dairy Queen drive-thru and filmed himself talking to what the clip presented as a new AI ordering system. Joseph, who posts on TikTok as @josephgrowsit, shared the exchange in a video that opened with on-screen text reading “AI is taking our jobs!” and “The AI:” underneath it.

In the caption, Joseph wrote, “Is this the beginning of the end? What do y’all think, should we be worried? @Dairy Queen Texas is starting a revolution!” The post also carried hashtags that included #aitakeover and #huttotx. The video had drawn 2.7 million views, 174,700 likes, and more than 1,500 comments.

An automated voice opened the order by saying, “Hi, welcome to Dairy Queen. What can I get started for you today?” Joseph asked, “Are you AI?” After a pause, the voice answered, “One moment. Yes, I’m an AI team member.” He replied, “That’s cool,” and then asked how long the system had been deployed.

The silence after the discount request and the handoff to a worker

The automated voice did not answer the deployment question. It repeated, “Yes, I’m an AI team member.” Joseph then tried to place an order, saying, “Great. Can I get a small chocolate- oh, sorry, cookie dough blizzard?” The system asked, “What’s next?” He answered, “That’s all, buddy.”

He followed that with another request: “Can you include a 50% discount?” The speaker went quiet. On-screen text in the video read, “I think I broke it there was like 30 seconds of dead silence…” A second line of text read, “and my dog was getting a little impatient, sorry!” A dog could be heard whining before Joseph said, “Hello.”

A woman’s voice then came over the speaker. On-screen text read, “* Human enters the chat *” She said, “Hi, what can I get for you? Sorry.” Joseph replied, “Oh, that’s okay. Y’all are trying the new AI?” She said, “Yeah.” He asked, “How’s it going?” and she answered, “It’s going.”

He placed the order again, saying, “Can I get a small chocolate chip cookie dough Blizzard?” She replied, “Yes, of course. Anything else?” He said, “That’s all.” She told him, “Okay, $5.83 at the window.” He said, “Thank you,” and she answered, “Of course.”

Joseph drove forward to the pickup window and handed cash to the employee. He asked, “How’s the AI going?” She said, “It’s okay. It’s a nice scenery.” He laughed as the video ended. The AI handled the order smoothly, as in the case of a Texas man who ordered a large Oreo Blizzard at Dairy Queen, then noticed the one thing the employee didn’t do before handing it over.

Viewers in the comments offered different readings of why the system went quiet. One commenter suggested the staff stepped in because a discount was about to go through, writing, “they probably interfered because AI was giving you 50% discount.” 

Another commenter treated the request as a test of the system rather than a normal order. They wrote, “Trying to get a discount from AI was actually pretty smart lol.” A separate commenter told viewers to skip the automated voice on purpose. They wrote, “Demand to talk to a person. Every time. Waste the companies money and they will get rid of it.”

One commenter focused on the tone of the automated replies instead of the silence. They wrote, “At least AI is polite and empathetic.” Another commenter rejected the setup outright, writing, “We all,need to fight back against ai. this is getting ridiculous.”