Air Canada's chatbot made up a rule

Air Canada's chatbot made up a refund rule, and a tribunal made the airline pay for it.

A customer asked the chatbot about bereavement fares after his grandmother died. It told him he could buy his ticket and claim the discount afterwards. That was never Air Canada's policy, and it cost him about 650 Canadian dollars.

Air Canada argued it wasn't responsible for what its chatbot said. In 2024, British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal ordered the airline to pay him back, and ruled that Air Canada is responsible for all the information on its website, chatbot included.

The chatbot's reply was polite and clear. The problem was that it answered a question it should have passed to a person.

So when I set up AI to draft customer replies, the first thing I write down is which messages it's allowed to answer. Every message goes down one of five routes.

Standard: the message matches the rules, so AI drafts a reply for a person to check.

Ask: a fact is missing, so it asks the customer for that one thing.

Review: something's unusual, like an unhappy customer, so it flags it for a named person.

Decline: it's work you don't do, so it writes a polite no.

Hold: it sends nothing, tells a person, and waits. Hold is where legal threats, refund requests and anyone upset enough to complain in public go.

A bad draft is easy to fix before anyone sends it. A reply like Air Canada's is very hard to take back once the customer has it in writing.

Comment BRAIN and I'll send you my business brain starter kit, with five templates and a prompt that interviews you to fill them in.