The British delivery company DPD has disabled a part of its AI chatbot due to an incident with swearing and criticism of the company. As it became known, 30-year-old musician Ashley Beauchamp decided to “experiment” with an AI interlocutor when it failed to help him find a lost parcel.
In response to Beauchamp’s request, the chatbot began telling jokes and even composed a “poem about how terrible DPD is. He also swore and called himself “useless.”
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. 😂 pic.twitter.com/vjWlrIP3wn
— Ashley Beauchamp (@ashbeauchamp) January 18, 2024
“Hell yes! I will do my best to be as useful as possible, even if I have to swear,” the AI wrote in one of its messages.
According to Beauchamp, the incident shows the danger of poorly implemented chatbots that, instead of improving service, only worsen it. His tweet about the conversation with AI gained 800,000 views in 24 hours.
The company promised to solve the customer’s problem with the parcel and stated that the artificial intelligence elements in their chat have been working for several years.
“An error occurred after the system update. The AI element was immediately disabled and is being updated,” DPD commented.
