Air Canada's chatbot provided incorrect information about bereavement fare refund policies, leading a passenger to pay full price for flights and later being denied the promised discount, resulting in a tribunal ordering the airline to pay damages.
In November 2022, Jake Moffatt's grandmother died and he needed to book flights from Vancouver to Toronto for the funeral. He consulted Air Canada's website chatbot about bereavement fares, which incorrectly told him he could purchase normal-price tickets and claim a bereavement discount refund within 90 days after travel. Based on this information, Moffatt booked flights costing CA$794.98 and CA$845.38. When he later applied for the refund with his grandmother's death certificate, Air Canada denied the claim, stating their policy only allows bereavement discounts to be requested before travel, not after. Air Canada argued the chatbot was a 'separate legal entity responsible for its own actions' and that Moffatt should have checked other parts of their website. After months of unsuccessful appeals, Moffatt took the case to British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal. Tribunal member Christopher Rivers ruled in February 2024 that Air Canada was responsible for all information on its website, including chatbot responses, and ordered the airline to pay Moffatt CA$812.02 in damages and fees. The case appears to be the first in Canada where a company tried to disclaim liability for its chatbot's actions.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
AI systems that inadvertently generate or spread incorrect or deceptive information, which can lead to inaccurate beliefs in users and undermine their autonomy. Humans that make decisions based on false beliefs can experience physical, emotional or material harms
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed