Burger King is piloting an OpenAI-powered chatbot named "Patty" in 500 US restaurants. The AI listens through employee headsets to detect polite phrases like "please" and "thank you." Burger King is rolling out an artificial intelligence chatbot named "Patty" that will live inside employees' headsets to assist with operations and evaluate how friendly they are to customers. The OpenAI-powered voice assistant is part of a broader BK Assistant platform currently being piloted in 500 U.S. restaurants. The system is trained to recognize specific words and phrases associated with good hospitality, including "welcome to Burger King," "please," and "thank you.” Managers can then ask the AI how their location is performing on "friendliness," based on aggregated keyword data. The company emphasizes this is intended as a coaching tool rather than a method for tracking individual employees. "One of the ways that we started this was picking certain keywords, but it's one mechanism that was used to iterate on how to define friendliness," said Thibault Roux, Burger King's chief digital officer. He added that the company is working on capturing tone of voice as well. Beyond monitoring p...