Toyota has unveiled an artificial-intelligence project, dubbed Yui: an onboard virtual assistant that gauges your mood, indulges in personal chitchat and offers to drive if it senses you are sleepy or distracted. Until now, Toyota, the world’s second-largest car maker by vehicle sales, has kept relatively quiet about autonomous vehicles and how it plans to deal with challenges from Silicon Valley upstarts.

McDonald’s is getting better at using budget-friendly menu items to attract customers to its franchise stores. Promotions including $1 beverages and the “McPick 2” value menu helped lift comparable store sales 6% globally in the most recent quarter. Budget offerings have helped bring customers to stores, where premium items, like the Signature Crafted sandwiches, could encourage people to spend more per visit.

Red Lobster is launching a loyalty program called My Red Lobster Rewards, a mobile app-based system that rewards customers based on spending. The 700-unit seafood chain tested the app in Colorado for more than a year, and expanded that test to Arizona and Wyoming. It’s the first mobile app for the Orlando-based company, which has a 4 million-member email club.