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A supermarket chain artificial intelligence assistant has had its digital wings clipped, after leaving some customers deeply uncomfortable by pretending to be human and responding to inquiries with personal anecdotes.
The chatbot, known as Olive, provides a 24-hour service answering phone calls from Woolworths customers in Australia, helping them with everything from tracking orders to finding their favorite products.
While some have previously praised the “incredibly user-friendly” AI, users have recently expressed concern on social media about its tendency to insert itself into regular customer interactions with fictitious details about its life and family.
“He asked me my date of birth and when I gave it he started talking about how his mother was born the same year,” one user wrote on Reddit.
Another user described an experience in which Olive pretended to be a real person as she began talking about memories of her mother.
“AI Olive responded and continued to pretend to be a real person and started talking about her memories of her mother and her angry voice,” the person said on X.
Another user said the tool goes so far as to make “fake typing noises” to simulate a human, adding that “it gets scary when you can’t tell if it’s a human or a robot.”
In a statement, Woolworths said Olive’s responses regarding birthdays were not AI-driven but rather written by humans.
“A number of responses regarding birthdays were written for Olive by a team member several years ago, as a more personal way for Olive to connect with customers,” a Woolworths spokesperson told NBC News in an email response.
“Following customer feedback, we recently removed this particular script,” the spokesperson added.
