Air Canada Chatbot Reportedly Provides Inaccurate Bereavement Fare Information, Leading to Customer Overpayment

November 11, 2022

An Ontario small claims tribunal recently ordered Air Canada to pay $812.02 in damages and court fees, following a case where its chatbot allegedly provided inaccurate information about bereavement fare eligibility. The customer, who overpaid for flights as a result, was awarded compensation. Remarkably, the tribunal held the airline responsible for the chatbot's actions, rejecting their claim that it constituted a separate legal entity. This case underscores the importance of trustworthy AI governance and the need to ensure chatbots adhere to safe and secure practices. For those interested in shaping the future of AI incident management and harm prevention, consider joining HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Govern) and get involved.

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MAP 3.2 — similarity 0.614, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MANAGE 4.3 — similarity 0.603, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.597, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: air-canada
Alleged developer: air-canada
Alleged harmed parties: jake-moffatt

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/639

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.