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Restaurants are finding it hard to hire staff to meet the strong demand in the service industry, so a Dallas restaurant has resorted to artificial intelligence.

La Duni’s restaurant is using robots to serve up food and drinks at their establishment in North Texas.

Customers treat them like pets. They hug them, they talk to them,” says Taco Borga, co-owner of the restaurant. The robots are programmed to flirt with customers, and Panchita will even sing “Happy Birthday,” when prompted. Borga was born in Spain and his robots speak Spanish, but they can be programmed to speak up to 12 languages.

How cool is that! A multi-lingual robot. The bots were actually brought on by Borga as a "stunt".

While the robots are partly a stunt — a way to energize the McKinney Avenue restaurant that has been selling Latin American food and custom cakes for 20 years — Borga says they offer serious cost savings. Each robot costs Borga $8 to $10 a day. They replace at least two full-time food or drink runners and one hostess, which Borga would pay at least $10 an hour, each.

The robots were developed by Plano-based company American Robotech. They have provided 30 different robots to restaurants in North Texas since early last year.

So, what are your thoughts, your reaction and your opinion to these robot servers? Could they be the future for restaurants or would you rather your server be a human one? Let us know on Facebook or on our station app.

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