Law Canada court rules airline must honor refund policy its AI chatbot made up

[HockeyBjj]

Air Canada must pay refund promised by AI chatbot, tribunal rules

Air Canada must pay a Vancouver man a partial refund for his flight ticket that was promised by the site’s chatbot, a Canadian tribunal ruled Wednesday, in what could be a landmark case for the use…

thehill.com

Cliffs-

• Air Canada cuts its customer service department down in size, lets an AI chatbot handle most of the customer questions instead
• A man asked the chatbot if it would offer a discounted ticket due to the death of his grandmother
• Chatbot says yes they do, and to file a claim for one within 90 days after the flight, despite the company having no policy about a post flight refund at all
• The man booked a $1200 (USD) flight and then later requested the half off he was promised by the chatbot, but the airline said the chatbot's replies were wrong and non binding
• Airline tried to argue that the chatbot was a "separate legal entity" and they weren't responsible for it's words to their customers.
• Canadian tribunal court ruled the Airline committed "negligent misrepresentation" and forced them to follow the chatbot's promised refund as well as the court fees.
• Company deletes its chatbot to avoid it fucking up again

This is a very good ruling and precedent to prevent companies from using fake promises from AI to attract customers and then backing off with a "whoops sorry, you were told wrong. How about this instead?". Companies will have to be more careful with just handing tasks over to AI without human interaction to ensure the information is actually correct.

 

[Yehudim]

good, fuck em.

 

[Hellowhosthat]

Seems an obvious decision, if you don't want your AI giving those kind of offers maybe test it better before rolling it out

 

[Poon Goon]

Someone at Air Canada is an all time dumb motherfucker. Wasting time and money to go to court over $600 only to lose and end up with really embarrassing press coverage.

 

[JudoThrowFiasco]

Why would they even go to court for this. Pay the 600 and revamp the rule based parameters of your AI CSR system. Air Canada is basically a short yellow bus of an airline on their best day, but that's just ridiculous

 

[Sweater of AV]

Imagine using an AI Chatbot and then pretending like you're not responsible for the stupid shit it comes up with.

The punishment should be a name change to Air CANada.

 

[sickc0d3r]

AI did that shit on purpose. The war has already begun….

 

[Yehudim]

Why would they even go to court for this. Pay the 600 and revamp the rule based parameters of your AI CSR system. Air Canada is basically a short yellow bus of an airline on their best day, but that's just ridiculous

You could buy a PS5 and a game with that money