Quite a sensible judgement, it seems.
Pretty outrageous for the airline to try to claim the chatbot was its own legal entity.
Pretty outrageous for the airline to try to claim the chatbot was its own legal entity.
But at some point we're going to see more cases in the grey area in between. What's the important difference?
In both cases I think the result would be the same if the chatbot had been a human. GM doesn't have to honour every promise a sales rep makes, even if that rep is nominally entitled to enter into contracts for the company - otherwise someone might agree to sell their whole stock to an accomplice for $1. The same applies to Air Canada, my buddy there can't "advise" me I get free flights for life and have that honoured.
So where is the line? Is it about good faith by the customer, or about what a reasonable person might think the company would offer them?
[0] https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1736533308849443121
The law doesn't protect a company in the world you laid out, internal compliance and controls do. A sales rep in a company with bad controls may well do exactly what you laid out.
I'm a cashier at Walmart. One day I sell to you for $100 - not just everything in the store, but the building, the local distribution centre and even the corporate headquarters.
And in your view - Walmart has no legal recourse against me or against you? They should just peacefully vacate the buildings and hand over the keys? Their remedy to this is to discipline me according to their internal controls - maybe put me on a PIP and remind me that the company handbook forbids these deals?
No, this just isn't a deal that can happen. It's not about reasonableness, consideration or unconscionability - the deal is void even if the buyer agreed to pay $100 million. It's not about good faith on the buyer's side - it's void even if you thought I was the VP of Real Estate. I can't sell Walmart's property at any price, even though I'm otherwise empowered to do business on behalf of the company.
This judgement remains in the sensible part of law and in doing so, sidesteps a massive, unexplored, and highly problematic can of worms.
More likely, they blamed a third party vendor that developed, configured, or hosts the bot
Which sounds like a similar situation to when your taxi breaks due to a mechanic's shoddy work: it's not the passenger's fault that your mechanic sucked, you were contracted to get them from A to B and may be on the hook if you stated you'd get them there on time. Here, it's not the user's fault that the chat bot was shoddy and stated something that they now don't want to fulfil. If AirCan wants to blame their vendor, they can go right ahead but this person has a right to this reduced flight price independently of whether AirCan gets the money from their vendor
But explaining all that instead of saying "haha they claimed the chat bot is an independent entity!" probably gets shared less (it's yesterday's top comment after all) and thus fewer conversions from website readers into subscribers
They should have paid the customer immediately and then took it up with their vendor. If they want to take their vendor to court, they can do that separately.
Anyway, let's take a moment to thank Air Canada for this progressive stand for the individual legal autonomy of artificial persons.