Jake Moffatt was booking a flight to Toronto and asked the bot about the airline’s bereavement rates – reduced fares provided in the event someone needs to travel due to the death of an immediate family member.
Moffatt said he was told that these fares could be claimed retroactively by completing a refund application within 90 days of the date the ticket was issued, and submitted a screenshot of his conversation with the bot as evidence supporting this claim.
The airline refused the refund because it said its policy was that bereavement fare could not, in fact, be claimed retroactively.
Air Canada argued that it could not be held liable for information provided by the bot.
This article does not actually mention the chatbot being AI. As chatbots have been around for many years, it is possible this is just a normal non-‘AI’ chatbot that someone programmed that information with (potentially old information that had long since changed, but no one has updated).
Either way, they are liable for what it tells customers. If it is AI, well… no company should be using AI to make legally binding statements, or advertisements to customers (without human review).
At the moment, companies deploying an AI, should be doing so with AI as the product, not integrated into selling non-AI related products, or services.
You know what, you’re completely right. Thanks for pointing that out, my brain just auto-completed that detail because of how prevalent “AI” is in the news these days.
Honestly though, if it’s a more traditional chatbot that they had to program themselves, it’s all the more embarrassing for Air Canada that they were trying to weasel themselves out of this.