Burger King’s New AI Chatbot to Check If Employees Say ‘Thank You’ and ‘Please’

Burger King has also stated that this specific chatbot is going to be powered by Open AI (the same company behind Chat GPT) which is embedded into the headsets used by employees and is connected , and has also told that it’s being built not only to assess the “friendliness” index of an employee but to also assist them in many other ways like they can ask this bot practical questions in the cooking process as to how many ingredients go into the making of a whopper or how to clean an ice cream machine or soda fountain , alerting the managers in removing the items from a menu or when a digital kiosk is not functioning properly , generation of bills, and many more which are ascertained due to it’s connectivity to the company’s cloud based billing system.

A spokesperson from the company has affirmed that it’s not created to punish or force the workers but rather about “reinforcing great hospitality and giving managers helpful, real- time insights so they can recognize their teams more effectively.”

But this news has also spawned a lot of backlash online, with many users calling it ‘dystopian’ , ‘gross’ and contrast it’s key-word employee evaluation feature to that of the television series ‘Black Mirror’ while others have questioned on the accuracy of these chatbots as AI is prone to making errors and sometimes Hallucinations too. And the introduction of Artificial intelligence is also not new in the fast food industry with many companies like Mcdonalds had already introduced such features in it’s drive through and removed it after it was found to make errors and received backlash from it’s customers. So, the spokesperson has also assured that this feature is still in an experimental stage and considers this move as a risky step.

This article is written by Yoga Adithya, a student of Loyola Academy who is interning with Deccan Chronicle, Secunderabad.