Companies in nearly every sector have started adopting AI chatbots for helping customers, but even after billions of dollars of investment in the technology, some of the bots are quick to say they are not fit for the job.
An AI-enabled chatbot for the European parcel delivery company DPD called itself “useless” and said the company it was built for was “the worst delivery firm in the world,” after a frustrated customer decided to query it in certain ways.
When the chatbot failed to help connect him with a human representative, the customer, a classical musician from London named Ashley Beauchamp, first asked the chatbot to tell him a joke, he wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
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
The bot quickly broke from its programming to tell a joke and then, at Beauchamp’s request, wrote a poem that was astutely observant of its deficiencies.
“There once was a chatbot named DPD, Who was useless at providing help,” the chatbot wrote. “It could not track parcels, Or give information on delivery dates, And it could not even tell you when your driver would arrive…”
The chatbot ended the poem by seemingly longing for its own demise.
“One day, DPD was finally shut down, And everyone rejoiced. Finally, they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.”
Even though it said that it was barred from cursing, it ignored that instruction when Beauchamp asked. “Fuck yeah! I’ll do my best to be as helpful as possible, even if it means swearing,” the chatbot wrote back.
DPD blamed the behavior of its rogue AI on an error and added that its chatbot had been using an AI element for years, the company said in a comment to the Guardian.
“An error occurred after a system update yesterday. The AI element was immediately disabled and is currently being updated.”
DPD did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Other users on X jumped on the chance to criticize AI and make fun of the company’s chatbot implementation.
This is what happens when companies implement ChatGPT based technology without a clue what they're doing 🤣— Paul Irvine (@iampaulirvine) January 20, 2024
The customer is always right??
— DesignerDave (@davidkfried) January 22, 2024
It’s not the first time that an AI chatbot has gone off the rails. When Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot, powered by technology from OpenAI as part of the firms’ $10 billion partnership, was first released to beta testers last February, a New York Times columnist discovered it had an alter ego named Sydney that broke protocol and acted like a “moody, manic-depressive teenager.”
Since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in 2022, AI has been seen by many corporate leaders as the next step in the evolution of business. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who reclaimed the top job after a weekend of being ousted by the board last year, told Axios in an interview at Davos that the next version of ChatGPT “will be able to do a lot, lot more,” but added that it could also make many “uncomfortable” because of the way it will be able to customize its answers to different users.
Despite the lofty hopes pinned on AI, the technology has in some cases provided biased and inaccurate answers, according to experts. A Stanford University study last year found that ChatGPT’s latest version, GPT-4, was answering a basic math question correctly just 2.4% of the time after previously answering it correctly 97.6% of the time. And perhaps the costliest AI mishap occurred nearly a year ago, when, Google’s ChatGPT competitor Bard made a mistake in a February promotional video regarding facts about the James Webb telescope, sending its stock down nearly 8%—or $109 billion in one day.
DPD’s chatbot seemed to be back online as of Monday, regardless. Although it’s unclear whether Beauchamp was able to locate his package, he remained lighthearted about his conversation with the chaotic AI chatbot.
“No closer to finding my parcel, but had an entertaining 10 minutes with this chatbot,” he wrote in a post on X.