The fast-food restaurant chain is serving up TV commercials that cause Google's voice-activated, artificial intelligence-driven Google Home speaker to start talking about the Whopper sandwich. In the first version of the 15-second ad, which ran Wednesday on TV and is on YouTube,
a man dressed as a Burger King worker asks the camera, "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?"
That question triggered Google Home speakers to read the introduction to Wikipedia's page devoted to the Whopper. The ploy worked fine for Burger King until Wikipedia users began editing the Whopper Wikipedia page to include phrases such as: "The ‘Whopper’ is the worst hamburger product sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King,” and that ingredients included "rat and toenail clippings" and a "medium-sized child."
Wikipedia subsequently locked the Whopper page from new edits. And by Wednesday afternoon, Google had deactivated the ad's ability to trigger Home devices.
But Burger King launched two slightly tweaked versions of the ad late night Wednesday on episodes of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC in New York, Miami and Los Angeles.
By substituting the voice saying the command with a woman's voice or a different male voice from the man seen in the ad, the new spots again activated Google Home devices. When USA TODAY tried the ads Thursday morning, Home once again started listing Whopper ingredients, courtesy of Wikipedia.
For Burger King, the ad served as a way to tap into the growing ownership of home speakers with AI-enhanced digital assistants such Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri — and of course, to generate some buzz. The company on Wednesday saw three times the activity on Twitter as it did the previous day, it said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Not all of that activity was positive, however, with one software developer noting sarcastically that the practice "definitely can't go wrong or be used in any way."
re: that burger king ad, yeah relying on linking to wiki text through an assistant definitely can't go wrong or be misused in any way
— Anthony Kirkpatrick (@nonelement) April 12, 2017
Burger King fail. Hijacking devices isn't cool. It's clever, but it's not going to win friends. #tech#GoogleHomehttps://t.co/Pe5aT0kplP
— Dawn Xiana Moon (@DawnXianaMoon) April 13, 2017
The chain, which is owned by Ontario, Canada-based Restaurant Brands International, has long been known for its wacky ad campaigns. These have included the mask-wearing — and, by some, considered creepy — king character and the costumed Subservient Chicken, who responded to Web commands such as "dance" or "do jumping jacks" in its 2004 debut and returned in 2014 to promote the Chicken Big King sandwich.
That question triggered Google Home speakers to read the introduction to Wikipedia's page devoted to the Whopper. The ploy worked fine for Burger King until Wikipedia users began editing the Whopper Wikipedia page to include phrases such as: "The ‘Whopper’ is the worst hamburger product sold by the international fast-food restaurant chain Burger King,” and that ingredients included "rat and toenail clippings" and a "medium-sized child."
Wikipedia subsequently locked the Whopper page from new edits. And by Wednesday afternoon, Google had deactivated the ad's ability to trigger Home devices.
But Burger King launched two slightly tweaked versions of the ad late night Wednesday on episodes of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel Live on ABC in New York, Miami and Los Angeles.
By substituting the voice saying the command with a woman's voice or a different male voice from the man seen in the ad, the new spots again activated Google Home devices. When USA TODAY tried the ads Thursday morning, Home once again started listing Whopper ingredients, courtesy of Wikipedia.
For Burger King, the ad served as a way to tap into the growing ownership of home speakers with AI-enhanced digital assistants such Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri — and of course, to generate some buzz. The company on Wednesday saw three times the activity on Twitter as it did the previous day, it said in a statement to USA TODAY.
Not all of that activity was positive, however, with one software developer noting sarcastically that the practice "definitely can't go wrong or be used in any way."
re: that burger king ad, yeah relying on linking to wiki text through an assistant definitely can't go wrong or be misused in any way
— Anthony Kirkpatrick (@nonelement) April 12, 2017
Burger King fail. Hijacking devices isn't cool. It's clever, but it's not going to win friends. #tech#GoogleHomehttps://t.co/Pe5aT0kplP
— Dawn Xiana Moon (@DawnXianaMoon) April 13, 2017
The chain, which is owned by Ontario, Canada-based Restaurant Brands International, has long been known for its wacky ad campaigns. These have included the mask-wearing — and, by some, considered creepy — king character and the costumed Subservient Chicken, who responded to Web commands such as "dance" or "do jumping jacks" in its 2004 debut and returned in 2014 to promote the Chicken Big King sandwich.
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