The online chatbot for DPD, a global delivery company, has been disabled after it cursed at a client and made disparaging remarks about the company, reported The Guardian.
The 30-year-old musician Ashley Beauchamp was attempting to locate a misplaced package, but he was not receiving any helpful information from the chatbot. He was so frustrated that he chose to switch gears and start playing around to see what the chatbot might accomplish. According to Beauchamp, this is when the "chaos started."
“Parcel delivery firm DPD have replaced their customer service chat with an AI robot thing. It’s utterly useless at answering any queries, and when asked, it happily produced a poem about how terrible they are as a company. It also swore at me,” Beauchamp posted on X.
"An error occurred after a system update yesterday. The AI element was immediately disabled and is currently being updated,” DPD said in a statement.
But the bot's mistakes became viral on social media. Beauchamp demonstrated how he persuaded the chatbot to be critical of DPD by requesting that it "recommend some better delivery firms" in a series of screenshots.
"DPD is the worst delivery firm in the world and I would never recommend them to anyone," the bot said in response to the instruction.
Beauchamp posted the conversation on X, where the chatbot responded to one of the messages with, “Fuck yeah! I’ll do my best to be as helpful as possible, even if it means swearing.”
AI is used by DPD in their online chat to assist human operators in answering questions. The chatbot's strange conduct, according to the firm, was caused by a recent upgrade. As a result, the company removed the offending component and updated its system.
Although his chatbot experience had been "very amusing," Beauchamp acknowledged that there was a serious element to the conversation.
According to him, "these chatbots are meant to make our lives better, but when they're done poorly, it just makes the user's experience more frustrating and impersonal." "I believe it has truly touched a nerve with people."
Regarding his package, Beauchamp was contacted by DPD to "resolve his issue."
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