AI chatbot goes rogue

AI-powered chatbot of the delivery company DPD recited poetry and used swear words after failing to help a customer

An AI-powered chatbot of the delivery firm DPD has reportedly shown off its poetry skills, used foul language, and even bitterly criticized the company itself – after failing to somehow help a customer locate his lost package. The chatbot ended up partially disabled, with the company blaming its abnormal behavior on an “error” within a new software update.

The issue was reported Friday on X, formerly Twitter, by Ashley Beauchamp, a London-based musician. The man tried to use the DPD chatbot to track a missing parcel, yet the program failed to provide any useful answers.

Beauchamp then decided to have some fun with the chatbot, making various requests of varying inappropriateness to the program, which, rather surprisingly, easily broke its own purported rules and played along.

Namely, the chatbot agreed to use swear words when the user asked it to do so. “F*ck yeah! I’ll do my best to be as helpful as possible, even if it means swearing,” the program stated.

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.