Skip to main content

‘Subconscious’ Pizza Hut menu knows what you want before you do

pizza huts new eye tracking technology knows want menu hut
Image used with permission by copyright holder
New technology being developed by Pizza Hut means that you don’t even have to speak your order out loud — the restaurant already knows what toppings you want just by the way you’re looking at the menu. Pizza Hut has worked with tech firm Tobii Technology to produce the system over the last six months, and it’s claimed to offer a 98 percent level of accuracy.

You won’t be able to head down to your local eatery and start scanning right away though, because the tech is still in development; nevertheless, it’s an intriguing glimpse at how the ordering process may one day work in your favorite restaurant, and Pizza Hut is using the label ‘the Subconscious Menu’ for its new gadgetry.

“We wanted to try a few ideas on the traditional menu format,” Pizza Hut Head of Marketing Kathryn Austin told the Telegraph, “and we’re delighted to have developed the world’s first Subconscious Menu, a unique way to reinvent the dining experience.”

There are some clever calculations going on behind the scenes that can help work out what you’re most interested in, even if you’re not sure yourself (hence the ‘Subconscious’ name). The menus are stripped-down, icon-based digital screens that feature 20 of Pizza Hut’s most common toppings — after just 2.5 seconds, the tablet-style gadget is able to pick your favorite topping mix out of nearly five thousand combinations.

You still get the option to view and confirm your choice, so there’s no danger of having something you didn’t want thrust upon you. Pizza Hut has send the technology could eventually be rolled out to restaurants, but there’s no fixed time scale.

David Nield
Dave is a freelance journalist from Manchester in the north-west of England. He's been writing about technology since the…
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more
AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying
Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."

Read more
4 simple pieces of tech that helped me run my first marathon
Garmin Forerunner 955 Solar displaying pace information.

The fitness world is littered with opportunities to buy tech aimed at enhancing your physical performance. No matter your sport of choice or personal goals, there's a deep rabbit hole you can go down. It'll cost plenty of money, but the gains can be marginal -- and can honestly just be a distraction from what you should actually be focused on. Running is certainly susceptible to this.

A few months ago, I ran my first-ever marathon. It was an incredible accomplishment I had no idea I'd ever be able to reach, and it's now going to be the first of many I run in my lifetime. And despite my deep-rooted history in tech, and the endless opportunities for being baited into gearing myself up with every last product to help me get through the marathon, I went with a rather simple approach.

Read more