A small British company is in financial and legal trouble after its artificial intelligence chat assistant promised a customer an 80% discount on a large order. The company boss said the customer spent about an hour chatting with the AI assistant, during which he tested the assistant's mathematical calculations and gradually led the conversation to the issue of discounts on hypothetical orders.
The customer expressed appreciation for the robot's capabilities, and then the AI assistant did something that no one expected. It originally only had to answer customer questions outside of working hours, but it "generated a non-existent discount code on its own initiative", first offering a 25% discount, and then increasing the discount to 80%.
After receiving this "pie falling from the world", the user was ecstatic and immediately placed an order of more than 8,000 pounds (approximately RMB 72,000). Bosses say the company will suffer thousands of pounds in losses if the order is honored. The company tried to cancel the order, but the customer said he would file a lawsuit in small claims court if the company didn't live up to the robot's promises.
The boss said that the chat AI has been running successfully for more than 6 months without any surprises and has no authority to make financial decisions. All discounts and special offers must be approved manually and cannot be automatically generated. Ultimately, the order was fully refunded to the customer, and the company refused to acknowledge that the false discount code was valid.