Burger King Cooks Up ‘Patty,’ an AI Chatbot to Monitor Employees

You’ll soon be able to have it your way at some Burger King locations with the help of an AI chatbot for employees. As revealed on Thursday by the company’s chief digital officer in an interview with The Verge, the fast-food chain is adding Patty, an AI chatbot, to the headsets some of its employees wear as part of a 500-location pilot later this year.

The Patty chatbot will assist with work tasks but will also monitor manners, ensuring employees use phrases such as “please” and “thank you” in customer interactions.

“This is meant to be a coaching tool,” Burger King’s Thibault Roux told The Verge. 

Patty, not to be mistaken for the Krabby Patty burger from SpongeBob SquarePants, will also perform tasks such as alerting the inventory management system when an item is out of stock. Patty is part of a larger AI-driven system called BK Assistant that will be in all Burger King restaurants by the end of the year. 

While Burger King will be using AI in headsets, Roux said it’s not quite ready to use the technology for taking orders yet, although other fast-food chains have tried. While AI seems to be taking over entire industries, businesses such as Taco Bell have found that rolling out AI to hungry customers is a lot harder than it sounds. A pilot for AI ordering from McDonald’s ended in 2024, unsuccessfully.

“Not every guest is ready for this,” Roux said.

Labor’s view on AI-enabled burger crafting

Not everyone is a fan, either.

The new executive director of the AFL-CIO’s Technology Institute, Lauren McFerran, said that what Burger King is planning is part of a larger trend in the workplace toward using AI for employee surveillance.

 “Workers across the economy are being subjected to invasive and dehumanizing monitoring that underscores the need for strict and enforceable guardrails,” McFerran said. “AI should be used to make jobs better and safer, not as an invasive tool to harm working people.”