Description: On July 13th, 2024, a user reported an incident involving PayPal's generative AI chatbot. The chatbot allegedly incorrectly informed the user of a declined transaction that never occurred, causing confusion and prompting a call to customer service for clarification. This false alert suggests a flaw in the AI system's reliability. The incident created unnecessary labor for both the user and PayPal's human support, demonstrating the potential harm of deploying generative AI without thorough testing and error handling mechanisms.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: PayPal developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Kiri Wagstaff , PayPal customer service representatives and PayPal customers.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
748
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2024-06-19
Editors
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
wkiri.com · 2024
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
The other day, I couldn't find some information I needed on the PayPal site, so I engaged with their generative AI chatbot. Before I could type anything, it launched in with this comment:
Hi Kiri!
I'm your PayPal Assistant and always here…
Variants
A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.
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