Air Canada held liable for its chatbot's invented fare policy

Air Canada's website chatbot told a customer he could apply for a bereavement fare after travel. The BC Civil Resolution Tribunal rejected the argument that the chatbot was a separate entity and held the airline liable for negligent misrepresentation.

Source: Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149↗

Failure modes it illustrates

• FM-07Hallucinated facts, real actions

  The model invents something (a policy, a price, a legal citation) and then acts on it or communicates it with the authority of the firm behind it.

• FM-04Identity & delegation gaps

  Nobody can say which principal an agent was acting for when it acted. Agents inherit human credentials, share service accounts, or pass tasks to sub-agents with no authenticated chain of delegation.