Burger King cooks up AI chatbot to spot if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
The Guardian World
by Coral Murphy MarcosFebruary 27, 2026
OpenAI-powered assistant will help to ‘understand overall service patterns’, company says, as move sparks backlash
From hospitality workers to retail employees, the exaggerated “customer service voice”, often mocked in internet memes as wildly different from someone’s real voice, has long been a cultural trope. Fast-food giant Burger King is now taking that voice one step further, saying it will detect whether employees are using words like “please” and “thank you” through the assistance of artificial intelligence.
On Thursday, 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.
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Originally published on The Guardian World on 2/27/2026