KFC South Africa is embracing the future of fast food with its Kentucky AI Integrated Assistant (KAIIA), an AI platform designed for Mzansi, speaking 11 languages with local flair.
Since launching a week ago as part of KFC’s annual Taste campaign, KAIIA has had almost 10 000 interactions from users across SA. The fried chicken giant expects interest in KAIIA to soar as more South Africans discover the AI's ability to chat in local lingo.
Grant Macpherson, CMO at KFC Africa, said the brand loves pushing boundaries and surprising consumers with its campaigns, showing the lengths people, and now AI, will go to for the taste of KFC.
Macpherson said the campaign shows KAIIA becoming obsessed with KFC and doing everything she can to get closer to the KFC taste. The story follows her as she goes to extreme lengths to experience the taste of KFC. “But now that she’s learnt the taste, that’s just the start of what she can do.”
He added: "KAIIA is a homegrown large language model with the functionality of normal AI; however, when you speak to her, you’ll find her obsession with the KFC taste is pretty obvious.
“KAIIA runs on a custom-trained LLM designed to engage users in real-time about all things KFC, from menu hacks to flavour breakdowns. Her only limitation is that she’s completely obsessed with the taste. But as South Africa’s number one QSR brand, we see that less as a bug and more as our biggest strength.
“KAIIA is powered by Gemini, an LLM developed by Google. Gemini was trained on a massive dataset of text and code, giving it strong capabilities across many languages. To enhance KAIIA's understanding and fluency in South African languages, we also fed it specific example conversations, with a focus on IsiZulu, Afrikaans, IsiXhosa, Sesotho, Setswana and Xitsonga.”
Innovative AI
KAIIA allows KFC to engage with customers in a more personalised and interactive way, while showcasing the brand's commitment to embracing the latest technological advancements, Macpherson said.
"The advances in AI are on everyone’s lips, so we thought – why not put it on everyone’s taste buds too,” he added.
“Our idea is to ride the wave of relevance by creating a campaign that taps into the modern zeitgeist, sparks conversation and gives Mzansi a chance to engage with the tech in a fun and light-hearted way.”
KAIIA's future
Macpherson told ITWeb that KAIIA was built to evolve. As KFC’s loudest and hungriest spokesperson, she’s designed to show up wherever the brand does, he added.
“While she started by chasing the original recipe, you might just see her popping up in future campaigns to give some extra love to KFC’s more locally focused offerings. If it’s made for Mzansi, KAIIA will have something to say about it.”
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