Neal Freiman

In today's edition of Is This Real Life or Black Mirror, Burger King is rolling out an internal AI chatbot that will evaluate employees' friendliness, such as whether they say please and thank you to customers.

Known as Patty, the chatbot is part of a broader BK assistant platform that lives in employees' headsets and will help them with meal prep, provide alerts for maintenance or inventory issues, and yes, check on their politeness levels.

The chain's chief digital officer told The Verge that this is all meant to be a coaching tool, saying that BK is iterating on capturing conversational tones to more precisely measure friendliness.

There was a lot of backlash to having AI police burger employee friendliness, but at the same time, Squidward could probably have used this.

Oh, that's interesting.

I would turn that setting off.

you would yeah i think i think politeness is perhaps and saying please and thank you is perhaps in the domain of parents instructing rather than some tech companies ai telling us whether to say please or thank you or to smile or to make eye contact uh i would if that setting comes by default i would probably turn it off i know maybe it'll keep people from leaving the country because there'll be just a you know a friendlier set of interactions that prevent people from going to lisbon

All right, finally, a new post-workout snack just dropped, Doritos.

Yesterday, PepsiCo decided nothing was sacred anymore and announced Doritos protein in two flavors, nacho cheese and sweet and tangy barbecue.

A one-ounce serving of these will contain 10 grams of protein compared to two in the standard version alongside zero grams of shame.

Because at this point, what else is there to put protein in?

Starbucks has protein cold foam.

Chipotle has protein bowls.

Dunkin' has protein milk.

Subway has protein pockets.

The good news, Anne, is gym bros and potheads used to have nothing in common.

Now they can bond over Doritos protein.

It's just crazy how much protein has infiltrated the food supply.

Doritos said that 86% of Americans are actively adding protein to their diets.

70% want protein and salty snacks.