Comedian and actor Moses Storm has appeared onscreen in movies, TV shows and multiple commercials, but nothing perhaps has made as immediate and as powerful of an impact as his new Burger King commercial.
In just a few seconds, Storm’s voice asks, “OK, Google. What is the Whopper burger?”
And in doing so, if you play the video loudly enough and close enough to a Google Home device, the device will answer your question. Pretty neat trick, eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_O54le4__I
Apparently neither neat nor cute nor funny, by Google’s standards.
Just a few hours after the video went live yesterday, Google had found a workaround to block Storm’s voice. The Verge reported: “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.”
Storm confirmed as much himself, writing on Instagram: “We have reason to believe that #google has disabled my voice entirely from activating any google home devises. As a long time google home user this has made my life incredibly challenging. Does anyone own a #googleHome so we can test this theory?”
Storm has found the humor in it all, so far, publicly at least. As he quipped: “We made an ad that is making a lot of people angry in a non Kendall Jenner way.”
Wait. There’s another way?