聊天机器人编造退票政策：乘客照着做被拒退款，仲裁庭判航司担责A chatbot invented a bereavement-fare policy: a passenger who followed it was refused a refund, and a tribunal held the airline liable

Air Canada's support chatbot described a bereavement-fare arrangement, claiming the discount could be claimed after travel, which contradicted the company's actual policy. A passenger booked on that basis and was later refused a refund. The bot's knowledge had drifted from current policy, and no one reviewed its answers.

The tribunal found negligent misrepresentation, awarded C$650.88, and rejected the argument that the chatbot was a separate legal entity: it was part of the airline's website.

The failure has two layers: at the Knowledge layer, answers came from content detached from current policy; at the responsibility layer, the company tried to cut the bot loose as a separate entity and the tribunal refused. What the bot says, the company says.

Customer-facing policy answers must come from the live policy base and update with it, with compensation and exception answers routed to humans. Read with INC-008: the user was fined there, the company paid here, one failure with two faces.

Policy answers only from the policy base: policy questions are answered from the current policy store, updated in step with policy changes.

Route exceptions to humans: answers involving compensation, refunds or exceptions are never the bot's alone.

The company owns the bot's words: manage bot output to the standard of the company's own statements; attempts to disclaim it failed in this ruling.