"Burger King announced it is rolling out a new AI chatbot connected to employee headsets at hundreds of locations in the US as part of a platform called BK Assistant, powered by OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Patty, what Burger King is calling its voice-enabled chatbot, will detect whether employees are using specific words when interacting with customers, including welcome, please and thank you."
"BK Assistant is a coaching and operational support tool built to help our restaurant teams manage complexity and stay focused on delivering a great guest experience. It's not about scoring individuals or enforcing scripts. It's about reinforcing great hospitality and giving managers helpful, real-time insights so they can recognize their teams more effectively."
"Other functions of the overall platform supported by artificial intelligence include alerting managers to automatically remove items from digital menus and the Burger King app when a product becomes unavailable. It will also help employees with preparing menu items, such as telling them which ingredients go into a Whopper once an order has been placed."
Burger King announced the rollout of BK Assistant, an AI chatbot powered by OpenAI, at hundreds of US locations. The voice-enabled tool called Patty monitors employee interactions to detect specific words including welcome, please, and thank you. The company frames this as a coaching and operational support system designed to help managers understand service patterns and recognize teams effectively, rather than individual employee evaluation. The platform also manages menu availability, alerts managers to out-of-stock items, and assists with order preparation instructions. The announcement sparked significant online backlash, with critics characterizing it as invasive corporate surveillance, prompting Burger King to clarify that the system focuses on overall hospitality reinforcement rather than individual scoring or script enforcement.
#ai-workplace-monitoring #customer-service-automation #employee-surveillance #fast-food-technology #corporate-accountability
Read at www.theguardian.com
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