Friday, February 27, 2026

Supermarket giant reins in AI assistant claiming to be human

People had voiced concern over Olive's tendency to break into routine customer interactions with fictional details about its life and family.

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... A supermarket chain's artificial intelligence assistant has had its digital wings clipped, after leaving some customers deeply uncomfortable by claiming to be human and responding to requests with personal anecdotes.

The chatbot, known as Olive, provides a 24-hour service answering phone calls from customers of Woolworths in Australia, helping them with everything from tracking down orders to finding their favorite products.

While some have previously praised the "incredibly friendly" AI, users have recently voiced concern on social media over its tendency to break into routine customer interactions with fictional details about its life and family.

"It asked me for my date of birth and when I gave it, it started rambling about how its mother was born in the same year," one user wrote on Reddit.

Another user described an experience that saw Olive claiming to be a real person as it began to talk about memories of its mother.

"AI Olive answered and kept claiming to be a real person and started talking about its memories of its mother and her angry voice," the person said on X. ...


#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2026-02-27 03:53 PM

artificial people with no boundaries, sure, that's the same thing as artificial intelligence.

This entire saga has revealed we can't really define intelligence in the first place.

We can only define it enough to do things like prove that Black people have less of it.

#2 | Posted by snoofy at 2026-02-27 04:55 PM

Have they demanded the surrender of the AI's driver's license?

#3 | Posted by Zed at 2026-02-27 05:16 PM

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