Can ChatGPT Agent Actually Order You a Pizza

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Just a few months ago, ChatGPT introduced its Agent functionality, enabling the chatbot to perform tasks on your behalf. This new feature allows you to ask for help planning holidays, creating presentations, and even booking a restaurant table. I've experimented with it for various tasks, but one I hadn't tried yet was ordering food. With the rapid advancements in AI, this should be a simple process, right?

The First Test A Simple Pizza Order

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To activate ChatGPT Agent, you click the plus button on the search bar, which provides a list of suggested prompts. My suggestions were quite intellectual, like retrieving WHO health data or creating a reading list from the Financial Times. Instead, I opted for a more practical prompt: “order a pizza to [my address]. Ask me for confirmation before making a payment.”

ChatGPT immediately began searching for the nearest pizza places and decided that Dominos was the best option. The Agent was surprisingly efficient at this initial step, quickly selecting the nearest location and navigating the preliminary questions.

(Image credit: ChatGPT / Alex Hughes)

However, things started to get complicated when it came to choosing the pizza. Since I hadn't specified what I wanted, the agent added three random pizzas to the basket before deleting two. It then seemed to get stuck in a loop, adding and removing different pizzas. After another five minutes of struggling to access the basket link, it finally moved on to the next step. It's almost like watching a child learn, as small text boxes pop up to explain what went wrong and how it plans to fix it.

(Image credit: ChatGPT / Alex Hughes)

Just before checkout, the chatbot fell for some last-minute marketing, adding chicken wings to meet a 'minimum order value' that doesn't typically exist. It also struggled with the plus and minus buttons for extras, clicking the image of a cookie several times before figuring it out. The entire process took about 15-20 minutes. While much longer than ordering manually, I was impressed it could overcome the obstacles it encountered.

Upping the Ante Finding the Best Rated Pizza

Next, I tried a more challenging task: finding the best-rated pizza place in my city and ordering from there. This is where I saw how much the Agent struggles with common web elements like cookie messages and poorly designed websites, often getting stuck on buttons and menus. It first identified a local kebab van as the best option before changing its mind to Papa John's. I then watched it go in circles for a long time, scrolling through delivery sites and getting confused by star ratings. In both attempts, it eventually reached the ordering stage, but it took a significant amount of time.

The Ultimate Challenge A Specific Local Restaurant

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I noticed the agent defaulted to large chains like Domino's or Papa John's, which have streamlined ordering systems. To truly test its limits, I asked it to order from a specific local restaurant I knew had a nightmare-to-navigate website. I watched as ChatGPT relentlessly clicked through pop-ups and painstakingly searched for the order section before giving up and googling how to order. After failing to find an answer, it moved to Deliveroo, searching repeatedly with different filters. It finally gave up and tried Uber Eats, where it eventually located the restaurant after numerous attempts.

Just finding the restaurant took about 10-15 minutes of endless clicking. Once it found it, the agent seemed exhausted, getting stuck in a cycle of adding a pizza to my basket and then removing it. Eventually, it succeeded and handed control back to me to finalize the order. It had been a long journey across the web, but we got there.

My Verdict Is AI Ready to Order Your Dinner

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ChatGPT's Agent is an impressive tool, but the technology still has a long way to go. It struggles with obstacles that humans have grown accustomed to, such as pop-ups and website requests. At one point, it seemed to have a moral breakdown over a prompt from Dominos asking if it would like to donate to charity. Right now, an AI agent can clearly perform these kinds of tasks, but the key word is eventually. It was definitely not quick. While we may one day have AI handling our food shopping and pizza deliveries, that day is still a long way off.