A supermarket chain’s artificial intelligence assistant has had its digital wings clipped after it made some customers very uncomfortable by claiming to be human and responding to requests with personal anecdotes.
The chatbot, known as Olive, provides a 24-hour service to answer phone calls from Woolworths customers in Australia, helping them with everything from tracking orders to finding their favorite products.
While some have previously praised the “incredibly friendly” AI, users have recently expressed concern over its tendency to break into regular customer conversations with imaginary details about their lives and family on social media.
“He asked me my date of birth and when I gave it, he started explaining how his mother was born in the same year,” wrote one user on Reddit.
Another user described an experience that saw Olive claiming to be a real person as he began talking about memories of his mother.
“AI Olive responded and continued claiming to be a real person and started talking about memories of her mother and her angry voice,” the person said on X.
Another user said the tool even went so far as to make “fake typing noises” to mimic a human, adding that “it gets scary when you can’t tell if it’s a human or a robot.”
In a statement, Woolworths said that Olive’s responses about the birthday were not AI-driven and instead were human-scripted.
“Many of the responses were written by a team member several years ago about a birthday treat for Olive as a more personal way for Olive to connect with customers,” a Woolworths spokesperson told NBC News in an email response.
“As a result of customer feedback, we recently removed this particular scripting,” the spokesperson said.
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