Burger King Runs Ad Triggering Google Home Devices; Google Shuts It Down (theverge.com)

Burger King unveiled a new advertisement earlier today designed to trigger users' Google Home devices. The ad specifically used the Google Home trigger phrase "Okay, Google" to ask "What is the Whopper burger?," thus triggering the Google Assistant to read off the top result from Wikipedia. But less than three hours after Burger King launched the ad, Google disabled the functionality. The Verge reports: As of 2:45PM ET, Google Home will no longer respond when prompted by the specific Burger King commercial that asks "What is the Whopper burger?" It does, however, still respond with the top result from Wikipedia when someone else (i.e., a real user) other than the advertisement asks the same question. Google has likely registered the sound clip from the ad to disable unwanted Home triggers, as it does with its own Google Home commercials.

Comments

Re:Nice Play

[msauve]

Rather than shut it down, Google should have simply changed the response to something on the order of "The Whopper is a big bunch of tasty calories, but doesn't provide good nutrition. If that's what you want, you should consider a burger from McDonald's, Wendy's, Sonic, or some other brand, which although no better nutritionally, isn't trying to play weird games with its advertising."