Burger King's advertise disabled for hijacking Google Assistant

Pic courtesy/YouTube

New York: Google has disabled fast food chain Burger King's recording on Google Assistant after the latter hijacked it to advertise its items.

According to a report in Arstechnica on Thursday, Burger King released a TV ad in which a person asks Google Assistant "OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?"

This statement triggers any Google Assistant devices to read aloud a description of the hamburger's ingredients.

For example, if a person has his Google Home near the TV when this ad plays out, it will prompt the speaker to read out loud the description of the hamburger's ingredients.

Unhappy that a third-party had hijacked its voice-command to advertise fast food, Google issued a server-side update to disable Burger King's recording.

"Before the ad was disabled, the Google Assistant would verbally read a list of ingredients from Wikipedia," the report noted.

As soon as the ad was out, internet users edited the content in Wikipedia page and added "toenails" and "cyanide" in the ingredients. This change made the Google Assistant briefly read out false edit.

After the incident, Google Home will no longer read out the burger's ingredient list, as Google made sure that Burger King's specific recording of the phrase no longer triggers a voice response.

When the Google Home receives the specific query, it quietly goes back to sleep, without any response.