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An Air Canada plane is seen in the air after departing from Pearson International Airport in Toronto, Ontario, Canada May 16, 2022.
Keeping your promises
In 2022, a grieving passenger went on Air Canada’s website and asked its AI-powered chatbot about the airline’s bereavement policy. The chatbot said yes, there are reduced fares if you’re traveling after the death of a loved one and you have 90 days after taking the flight in order to file a claim. The problem: That’s not Air Canada’s policy. The airline specifically requires passengers to apply for and receive the discount ahead of time — not after the flight.
Now, a Canadian court says that Air Canada has to honor the promises made by its AI chatbot, even though they were incorrect and inconsistent with the airline’s policies.
“While a chatbot has an interactive component, it is still just a part of Air Canada’s website,” the judge in the case wrote. “It should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information on its website. It makes no difference whether the information comes from a static page or a chatbot.”
It’s a big ruling that could set new precedent, at least in Canada, that AI companies — or their clients — are legally liable for the accuracy of their chatbots’ claims. And that’s no simple thing to fix: Generative AI models are notorious for hallucinating — or making stuff up. If using AI becomes a major liability, it could drastically change how AI companies act, train their models, and lawyer up.
And it would immediately make AI a tough product to sell.
An Air Canada Boeing 777-300ER aircraft approaching the runway at Heathrow Airport in London.
Hard Numbers: Air Canada pilots hit eject button, empty homes “jeopardize” US-Canada ties, Gujarati smugglers charged in deaths, Canada's new methane migraine
4,500: Air Canada’s roughly 4,500 pilots metaphorically flung open the emergency exit this week by opting out of their current contract in order to force new wage negotiations this summer. The pilots at Canada’s largest carrier have gotten 2% annual raises since 2014, but their counterparts at several US airlines recently won far heftier raises.
1: A new 1% tax on vacant or underused housing in Canada is putting US-Canada relations “in jeopardy,” according to a bipartisan group of US lawmakers. The legislators want Ottawa to exempt US citizens from the tax, which imposes the additional levy on residential properties that sit unused for more than half of each calendar year.
3: Authorities in the Indian state of Gujarat have charged three human traffickers in the deaths of a family they tried to smuggle across the US-Canada border in January 2022. The victims, who froze to death in the province of Manitoba, included an infant, a teenager, and their parents.
0.2: Canadian energy firms may struggle to meet new US and EU regulations that require that only 0.2% of the methane produced during oil and gas production escapes into the atmosphere. Canada has ambitious targets for reducing methane overall, but experts say many of its energy companies would struggle to meet these particular “methane intensity” requirements. That could be a problem if the US and EU decide to demand that their energy trade partners, which include Canada, abide by the rules.