Hundreds of US Burger King restaurants will participate in an AI trial that aims to detect whether employees are using words such as "please" and "thank you". Photo / 123rf
Hundreds of US Burger King restaurants will participate in an AI trial that aims to detect whether employees are using words such as "please" and "thank you". Photo / 123rf
Customer service workers at Burger King in the United States will now be monitored by AI bots to assess how courteous and friendly they are.
An AI assistant named “Patty” will be installed in workers’ headsets to monitor customer interactions and assign “friendliness scores”, according to TheGuardian.
A spokespersonfor the “home of the Whopper” told the BBC the trial is already underway at 500 locations across the United States, with plans for a nationwide rollout by the end of the year.
“We believe hospitality is fundamentally human,” the spokesperson said.
“The role of this technology is to support our teams so they can stay present with guests.”
The Guardian reported the voice-enabled chatbot – created by OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT – has been configured to detect pleasantries such as “welcome”, “please” and “thank you”.
The burger chain noted the technology was not intended to record conversations or assess employees individually, but rather to “help managers understand overall service patterns”.
Some social media users expressed concerns that a new Burger King AI trial breached staff privacy. Photo / 123rf
However, the trial, which analyses audio from drive-thru interactions, has drawn an overwhelmingly negative response on social media, with some users describing it as “gross” and “peak late-stage corporate behaviour”.
The BBC reported that critics raised privacy concerns, arguing the software was overreaching.
A promotional video for the programme shows “Patty” alerting a staff member that the Diet Coke supply in a soda fountain is low.
In another clip, the AI assistant tells a worker: “The team’s friendliness scores this morning were the highest this week.”
A third video shows a cook asking “Patty” for help recalling a recipe.
The restaurant said the AI assistant wasn’t designed to force staff to follow scripts or listen in on private conversations, NBC News reported.
Burger King’s chief digital officer Thibault Roux said: “It’s really a coaching tool. To help you as an employee become more hospitable, and we’re going to help you also with certain operation flaws that may occur that can be a little bit complex.”
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