Subj : A customer managed to get the DPD AI chatbot to swear at them, an
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Mon Jan 22 2024 11:15:05

A customer managed to get the DPD AI chatbot to swear at them, and it wasnt 
even that hard

Date:
Mon, 22 Jan 2024 10:59:27 +0000

Description:
AI powered chatbots can help deal with customer queries more efficiently, but 
sometimes it can all go wrong.

FULL STORY
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The DPD customer support chatbot, which is unsurprisingly powered by AI, 
swore at a customer and wrote a poem about how bad the company is. 

DPD said that an update the day before the error was discovered was 
responsible for the malfunction, which resulted in the chatbot exploring its 
newfound use of profanity. 

Word of the malfunction spread across X (formerly Twitter) after details 
emerged of how to abuse this particular error. The customer is always right, 
right? 

Many businesses have adopted AI powered chatbots to help filter queries and 
requests to their relevant departments, or to provide responses to frequently 
asked questions (FAQ). 

Usually there are rules implemented to the AI that prevent it from providing 
unhelpful, malicious or profane responses, but in this case, an update 
somehow released the chatbot from its rules. 

In a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter), DPD customer Ashley Beauchamp 
shared their interaction with the Chatbot, including the prompts used and the 
bots responses, stating, It's utterly useless at answering any queries, and 
when asked, it happily produced a poem about how terrible they are as a 
company. It also swore at me. (Image credit: Ashley Beauchamp - X) 

This is just one example of how an AI chatbot can go rogue if not properly 
tested before release and after updates. For smaller businesses an AI chatbot 
mixup like this could potentially cause reputational and financial harm, as 
Mr Beauchamp managed to get the chatbot to recommend some better delivery 
firms as well as criticizing the company in a range of formats including a 
haiku. (Image credit: Ashley Beauchamp - X) 

DPD also offers customer support with human operators via a WhatsApp 
messaging service or through the phone. Many Chatbots use large language 
models (LLM) to understand questions and generate responses, with the data 
that LLM AI is trained on coming from large quantities of human 
conversations. 

Due to the size of the data sets that LLMs use, it can be difficult to filter 
out profanity and hateful language completely. Sometimes this results in a 
chatbot responding to a question or prompt with words it otherwise would not 
use. 

 Via BBC More from TechRadar Pro Take a look at our rankings of the best AI 
tools For marketing, long-form, and research - take a look at the best AI 
writer software AI helps the world's biggest tech firms smash $10 trillion 
market capitalization ceiling



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/a-customer-managed-to-get-the-dpd-ai-chatbot-to-
swear-at-them-and-it-wasnt-even-that-hard


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