What fast-food chain is using AI to monitor employee ‘friendliness’?

Burger King wants to use artificial intelligence to improve its services for both customers and employees, so it’s going to have the technology surveilling the entirety of its operations at each location. The BK Assistant will look at everything from food inventory to the status of kitchen equipment to employee schedules and interactions with customers.

And provide feedback. The tool has been trained to analyze employee interactions with customers for a friendliness score. It looks for phrases like “welcome to Burger King” and “please” and “thank you.” Managers can then ask the BK Assistant voice-enabled chatbot, named Patty for obvious reasons, for the friendliness score for a specific location or shift.

Less-creepy tasks for the BK Assistant include things like alerting staff when a bathroom needs to be cleaned, automatically updating menus if the kitchen runs out of something, and helping employees figure out what they need to prepare a meal. The tech is currently in place in about 500 locations and is set to reach all 7,000 by the end of the year.