LAS VEGAS — The robot barman at The Tipsy Robot in Las Vegas doesn’t need a tip to pay rent or buy groceries. But customers are still being asked to vacate one.

After customers choose their drinks on a touchscreen, two robotic arms mix cocktails at the Venetian Hotel bar. A margarita costs $17, and the payment screen includes a 10% service charge and asks for an additional tip.

The experience raises the question that’s becoming harder to ignore as automation marches deeper into restaurants, cafes, and other service businesses: If the service is done by a machine, who is the customer tipping?

This is not just a Las Vegas question.

Robot-assisted coffee company Artly Coffee has implemented digital tipping prompts at some of its locations. Automated kiosks at Newark Liberty International Airport have asked for tips from customers even when there's no direct employee service. In Portland, Ore., Top Burmese uses a robot to deliver food to some tables after employees take orders.

When there is a machine involved, the old tipping logic becomes less clear for customers. Tips can go right to the pocketbooks of restaurant servers, bartenders, and delivery people. A robot cannot.

That makes the destination of the money particularly important.

A tipping culture on the move

Americans are seeing requests for tips in more situations than they did a few years ago already.

A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 72% of U.S. adults felt they were expected to tip more often than they had five years earlier. Only about a third said it was very or extremely easy to know whether or how much to tip for different services.

Those requests are more visible thanks to digital payment systems. Suggested percentages may appear on a checkout screen before customers have decided whether a tip is appropriate.

Then we have the robots. That’s another side of the discussion.

Michael Lynn, a Cornell University professor emeritus and researcher on tipping, says most of the old reasons for tipping don’t apply when a robot is providing a service. In general, people tip because they want to reward good service, to help workers who depend on tips, or to follow social norms.

But those motives are harder to apply to a machine.

But that doesn't mean customers will necessarily refuse to tip.

A study by Lisa Cain and Katerina Berezina found that only about 11% of respondents said they would tip a robotic barman. But willingness rose considerably when participants were told the money would go to human employees. Roughly 42 percent of people who said they would not tip at first might if the money went to workers.

The study was small—102 usable responses—so its findings should not be considered representative of all consumers. But it does point to an important factor: Customers care where the money goes.

Who gets a robotic tip?

Businesses offering robot-assisted services sometimes do not book gratuities as revenue.

The Tipsy Robot and Artly Coffee representatives said tips collected at their businesses go to human workers, not to the companies themselves, the author said. As quoted in the original reporting, a company representative said Artly also changed how it prompts people to tip digitally.

That distinction is important because U.S. federal law restricts how employers can hold onto tips paid to employees.

The U.S. Department of Labor says employers can’t keep their employees’ tips, and managers and supervisors can’t generally take tips from a pool that includes tips left for other employees. Federal law also allows certain tip pooling arrangements among eligible employees. State law may afford you additional protections.

But a payment called a service fee is not necessarily the same thing as a tip. That distinction should be clear to customers and checked for every business model.”

The question that remains is more focused than asking whether "robot tips" are legal.

What is the classification of a payment where a customer voluntarily tips via a machine, and who is entitled to it?

That may depend on the facts of the transaction, the employer's policies, the applicable state law, and the representation of the payment to customers.

Robots aren’t necessarily taking jobs from people.

The presence of a robot does not automatically mean fewer jobs.

Katerina Berezina, an associate professor at the University of Mississippi who studies hospitality technology, says there are other reasons beyond reducing labor costs that might drive businesses to adopt robots. Robots can do repetitive jobs, provide novelty, and help companies with operational issues.

Artly has similarly claimed its technology is meant to augment people, not eliminate human jobs.

That argument highlights a broader truth about the hospitality industry: Automation can change jobs without necessarily wiping out all the roles humans play.

A robot could make a drink or carry a meal, while people do customer service, food preparation, maintenance, cleaning, supervision, and other jobs.

The question for workers, though, is how automation will affect their pay and conditions.

“Restaurants should be responsible for addressing low pay and working conditions, not replacing better pay with automation,” says One Fair Wage, an advocacy group.

Should you tip a robot?

There isn't one size-fits-all answer.

For a traditional restaurant server, tipping is still a big part of the U.S. dining experience. Pew found that 92 percent of Americans who eat at sit-down restaurants say they always or often leave a tip. At the same time, 72% do not want businesses to add automatic service charges or tips to customers’ bills.

It’s a much less established space, robot-assisted service.

If a robot makes or serves a product, a customer may reasonably want a tip to go to human workers, who maintain the equipment, prepare ingredients, take orders or do other work.

But customers shouldn’t have to guess.

Companies using automated tipping must be clear about whether a payment is a tip or a service charge and who gets it and how it is shared.

That transparency may be the deciding factor in whether consumers will embrace robot tipping.

The technology itself is unlikely to resolve the debate. Customers will.

If people keep tipping when machines ask them to, businesses have an incentive to keep the prompts. If customers say no, the practice could fall out of favor.

For the moment, the best rule may be the simplest: Before you tip a machine, find out who gets the money.