April 3 (Reuters) - Papa John's International wants to

inject artificial intelligence technology into how its customers

order pizza through an expanded partnership with Google Cloud,

the chain said on Thursday.

The company's plan is to put a personalized touch - based on

past customer behavior and other context - onto phone push

notifications suggesting orders, marketing emails, and loyalty

program offerings. It will also add a new online chatbot and the

ability to order through virtual assistants.

The announcement marks the latest by a fast food company to

tout AI technology as a way to boost sales and customer service,

and streamline operations.

"The advances in technology are allowing us to do things

that we couldn't do three or four years ago," said Kevin

Vasconi, Papa Johns' ( PZZA ) chief digital officer. "Some of it is

around scalability, some of it is around security, some of it

is, quite honestly, around cost."

The use cases announced Thursday are similar to what many

major restaurant companies have done for years to make use of

their reams of sales data.

"We've fallen behind in many respects, but there's a big

opportunity to catch up fast and reclaim some of our tech

leadership," said Todd Penegor, who was hired as Papa Johns ( PZZA )

chief executive year. The pizza company was the first national

pizza chain to make online ordering available to all U.S.

customers when it did so in 2001.

Penegor was previously Wendy's CEO, where he presided over

another partnership with Google Cloud to bring AI technology to

the burger chain's drive-throughs. Penegor said that partnership

was instructive, and at Papa John's, he hired the chief tech

officer he worked alongside at Wendy's, Kevin Vasconi.

Vasconi also oversaw a tech transformation at Domino's Pizza

where he served as the top tech leader from 2012 to 2020.

In the future, Penegor and Vasconi said the chain intends to

roll out more AI progams to help in-store operations, such as

helping plan delivery routes and count store inventories.

(Reporting by Waylon Cunningham; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)