After months of negotiations, a civil court told Air Canada it must refund a customer who was given incorrect information about refunds by an AI chatbot on the company’s website. The company had argued that the chatbot was a separate legal entity and was not responsible for its actions.
Jake Moffat, the plaintiff in this case, reportedly visited the Air Canada website immediately after his grandmother died Ars Technica. He wasn’t sure how the airline’s bereavement rates worked, so he asked the chatbot on the website for an explanation. But the chatbot tricked him by asking him to book a flight immediately and then request a refund within 90 days. That’s not how it worked.
This is what Air Canada’s corporate policy says about the policy: “Air Canada’s bereavement travel policy provides an option for our customers who need to travel due to impending death or the death of an immediate family member. Please note that our bereavement policy does not allow for refunds for travel that has already taken place.”
Moffat followed the chatbot’s instructions and took the flight. He then requested a refund from Air Canada, which the company refused. At the time, the company argued that the chatbot’s response was related to the actual policy and that meant Moffat should have known that bereavement quotas could not be claimed after the flight. After months of trying to get a refund, Mofatt filed a small claims lawsuit with Canada’s Civil Resolution Tribunal.
In court, Air Canada suggested that the chatbot was a separate legal entity responsible for its own actions.
“This is a remarkable contribution. Although a chatbot has an interactive component, it is still only a part of Air Canada’s website. Air Canada should be clear that it is responsible for all information on its website. It makes no difference whether the information comes from a static site or a chatbot,” a court member wrote in the court decision.
This case in Canada is said to be the first of its kind Crushable. This could mean that the ruling in this case could have implications for future cases scrutinizing other companies’ AI-powered chatbots.
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