Reported The Expert It Isn't Costly
Air Canada argued it was not responsible for its own chatbot. The tribunal disagreed.
Air Canada's chatbot told a grieving passenger to book at full price and claim the bereavement rate within ninety days. The airline's real policy excluded claims once travel was over. A tribunal ruled it was answerable for what its own chatbot said.
If a chatbot quotes you a policy, screenshot it before you act on it.
If you need to travel immediately or have already travelled and would like to submit your ticket for a reduced bereavement rate, kindly do so within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued by completing our Ticket Refund Application form.
Jake Moffatt's grandmother had died. They went to Air Canada's website to book a flight to the funeral, and asked the support chatbot about bereavement fares.
The chatbot told them to book at full price and apply for the reduced bereavement rate within ninety days of the ticket being issued. So that is what they did, booking a Vancouver–Toronto flight on 11 November 2022 and applying six days later.
That was not the policy. Air Canada's actual rules — set out correctly on a separate page of the airline's own website — do not allow a bereavement claim once travel has been completed. The airline refused the refund.
What happened next is the part worth remembering. In front of British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal, Air Canada argued that it could not be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants or representatives — a chatbot included. The tribunal member spelled out what that amounted to: in effect, the airline was suggesting "the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions."
Tribunal Member Christopher C. Rivers called that a remarkable submission, and rejected it. A chatbot is still part of Air Canada's website, and the airline could not explain why a customer should be expected to trust one part of that website over another. He found the airline had not taken reasonable care to ensure its chatbot was accurate, which amounted to negligent misrepresentation, and ordered it to pay $812.02 — $650.88 in damages, $36.14 in interest and $125 in fees.
The sum is small. The finding is not. A company is answerable for what its chatbot tells a customer, and "the AI said it, not us" is not a defence that survives contact with a tribunal.
There is a smaller, more useful lesson underneath the legal one. The chatbot did not garble the policy or produce nonsense. It produced a clear, confident, plausible answer in the register of someone who knows the rules. That is exactly the kind of wrong answer people act on — particularly when they are booking a flight to a funeral and not in the mood to check.