Chatbot’s poetic roast prompts UK parcel firm to disable AI
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM — UK parcel delivery company DPD has disabled the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot on its website after a frustrated customer, Ashley Beauchamp, prompted it to write a poem criticizing DPD’s poor customer service.
Beauchamp asked the chatbot to compose the poem after failing to obtain information on the status of his parcel.
In the poem, the chatbot wrote “DPD was a waste of time, And a customer’s worst nightmare” and predicted the company would eventually “be shut down” so that “finally they could get the help they needed, From a real person who knew what they were doing.”
Beauchamp posted screenshots of his exchange with the chatbot on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), where they quickly went viral.
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
In response, DPD UK disabled the AI chatbot function. In a statement reported by ITV, the company said the technology had been in use successfully for years, but an error occurred after a recent system update.
“An error occurred after a system update yesterday. The AI element was immediately disabled and is currently being updated.”
A study by AI startup Vectara suggests that popular chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Palm have a 3% to 27% rate of “hallucination,” where they generate false information as if it were fact.
