Google deactivates command that wakes speaker during Burger King advertising

Google has set up a command on its servers, which means that users can no longer ask the Home speaker what a ‘Whopper burger’ is. Fast food chain Burger King used the text ‘Ok Google, what is a Whopper burger?’ in an American advertisement and speakers reacted to this.

The speaker no longer responds to the spoken phrase in the American advertisement of Burger King, but if someone asks what a ‘Whopper burger’ is, he or she does get an answer, Ars Technica writes. Blocking the ad shows that Google can disable things on the server side based on the voice. It is perhaps the first application of voice recognition that should also distinguish between different users.

The Burger King commercial on American TV worked because the Home speaker responds to “Ok Google.” The speaker listens all the time or someone nearby is saying words, only to wake up and connect to the internet.

Before Google blocked the command on the server side, Home started reading out a list of ingredients. According to The Verge, the fast-food chain’s marketing manager single-handedly modified the burger’s Wikipedia entry last week to reflect that phrase. Until last week, a different opening sentence was visible for ten years. Google Home relies on information from Google’s Knowledge Graph, which borrows the information from the Wikipedia entry. It is the first time that a large company uses the ‘hotwords’ of a smart speaker in a commercial on TV.

The Burger King ad in question