The restaurant chain Burger King announced in February that it is launching a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot integrated into an online management system, designed to track employee friendliness. It has named the chatbot, powered by OpenAI, “Patty.” A spokesperson for Burger King said it is being trialed in 500 restaurants nationwide, and all of the franchise’s U.S. restaurants should have access to the chatbot by the end of this year.
The system is being touted by Burger King as a teaching tool, used to ensure customer satisfaction and help streamline operations. The chatbot comes bundled with a broader management suite that will supposedly be able to track supplies and ingredients and remove out-of-stock items from menus in a store.
Of course, how it “teaches” is downright dystopian. The chatbot is designed to listen to conversations, searching for keywords and terms such as “please” and “thank you,” producing a “friendliness” score. To break it down, it's an always-on microphone, hooked directly into an OpenAI-powered chatbot, running a special model designed to rate how friendly an employee is to customers, and then it gives that information to managers for them to act on.
There isn’t much information on this system online, seeing as the BBC reported on it on Feb. 26, and companies are notoriously opaque regarding systems like this. One thing is clear: If you look through the buzzwords, past the curated videos and made-up examples, the entire point of this system is to spy on employees.
Even the stated reasons sound disgusting. A system for ranking the “friendliness” of employees? Managed by a chatbot, and separated by individuals? This is a tool for managerial overreach, for overzealous employers to police every single action one of their employees makes. It’s designed solely for managers to breathe down the neck of their staff, to make sure they play “nice.”
Of course, that’s just what news has been released. A system like this — a constant hot mic hooked directly into a chatbot — is an incredibly potent tool. Who knows what kind of data is being collected on these employees? This is a surveillance system, and there is no way they’re only using it for one single thing, no matter how much they say they are.
There’s been no word on it yet, but I can bet pretty confidently that this will be used for employee performance evaluations in the future. I would be astounded if this wasn’t used as a tool for union busting in the future. I’d be surprised if that’s not already a core feature of the chatbot. Maybe future versions of the Burger King management system will have a “unionization” risk right alongside the “friendliness” meter.
All of this surveillance tries to force an underpaid service worker to be better, to pretend to be happy for the customers. Smiling for the cameras so that “Patty” doesn’t report them for being “unfriendly.” It could almost be funny, if it wasn’t so dystopian.
Of course, the surveillance and control miss the mark entirely. What’s the point? There’s a much easier way to ensure good customer service, and it’s to make employees actually happy. You can always just pay your workers more. A well compensated worker is a happy worker, and a happy worker is productive and genuinely kind to the customers.
How much money is being spent on these headsets? How many millions of dollars have been spent on these AI systems, training the model and rolling it out to thousands of Burger King locations? Is a system of mass surveillance cheaper than just increasing wages?
While we will probably never know, and I would be astounded if they ever released real details of this system, what information we do have on it is utterly dystopian. It does make one thing clear, however: I’m certainly never going to a Burger King again.
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Charley Babb is a sophomore majoring in professional writing. He is an Opinion writer for The Miami Student, and he is active as a fencer in the Miami Medieval Club. He likes reading and creative writing in his free time.
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