New AI pilot raises concerns that AI is being used to monitor employees
Burger King is testing an artificial intelligence system that can detect whether employees are using polite language, such as "please" and "thank you," according to reports.
At the centre of the project is "Patty," a voice-enabled chatbot built with OpenAI technology that lives inside the headsets worn by workers.
Patty feeds into a broader digital platform called BK Assistant, which Burger King says will eventually be deployed across all its US restaurants by the end of 2026. The AI is already being piloted in roughly 500 locations.
Thibault Roux, Burger King's chief digital officer, told The Verge that the company gathered input from franchisees and customers on how to define and measure friendliness.
That work led the chain to train its AI to detect specific phrases in employee–customer interactions, including "welcome to Burger King," "please," and "thank you."
Managers can then ask the assistant how their restaurant is scoring on that friendliness metric, and Roux said the company is "iterating" on ways to capture the tone of conversations, not just the words.
Employee monitoring concerns
While Burger King frames Patty as a coaching tool, its deployment lands in a workplace climate where many employees are already uneasy about digital monitoring.
Surveys from groups such as Pew Research Centre have found workers broadly sceptical of AI systems that track their movements, keystrokes or desk time, with many citing concerns about privacy and fairness.
Unions and worker advocates report similar sentiment: a Prospect union poll of UK tech workers, for example, found strong opposition to all forms of digital surveillance at work, including algorithmic tools that feed into decisions about performance or job security.
Workers are also uneasy about being watched more generally.
The American Psychological Association's 2023 Work in America findings indicate that around half of workers (51%) across different workplace settings say their employer uses technology to monitor them on the job, including office staff, manual labourers and customer-facing workers.
Those who know they are monitored are more likely to report poor morale: they are more often uncomfortable with how their employer uses technology to track them (46% vs 23% of those who are not monitored), feel micromanaged (51% vs 33%) and say they experienced emotional exhaustion at work in the past month (39% vs 22%).
Not for tracking employees
But Burger King maintains that the technology is not meant to be a word-by-word checklist used against individual employees.
"It is not designed to track nor evaluate employees saying specific words or phrases," a company spokesperson told The Guardian.
Instead, they described BK Assistant as a broad support layer on top of daily operations.
"BK Assistant is a coaching and operational support tool built to help our restaurant teams manage complexity and stay focused on delivering a great guest experience," the spokesperson said.
"It's not about scoring individuals or enforcing scripts. It's about reinforcing great hospitality and giving managers helpful, real-time insights so they can recognize their teams more effectively."
Beyond monitoring politeness, Patty is wired into Burger King's kitchen equipment, inventory systems and a new cloud-based point-of-sale platform, Roux told The Verge.
Staff can ask the chatbot practical questions mid-shift, such as how many strips of bacon should go on a Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper or how to clean a shake machine, rather than consulting printed manuals, according to The Verge report.
Because of its link to the ordering system, the AI can also trigger automatic updates when stock runs out or machines fail. If an item becomes unavailable, Burger King says the assistant will flag the issue for managers and push an update through the company's digital channels.
"Within 15 minutes, the entire ecosystem will remove it from stock — whether you're walking into a restaurant to order from the kiosk, whether you're going to the drive-thru, the digital menu board will be updated," Roux told The Verge.
According to The Guardian, promotional material for the tool also shows Patty notifying staff when bathrooms need cleaning and guiding workers through Whopper ingredients after an order is placed.
Meanwhile, Roux told The Verge that Burger King is trialling AI-powered drive-thru ordering in fewer than 100 restaurants and remains cautious about rolling it out more widely.
"We're tinkering with it, we're playing around with it, but it's still a risky bet," he told the news outlet. "Not every guest is ready for this."
