Risk register · entry
Q1 · PredictableAir Canada chatbot
A tribunal held an airline liable for a refund policy its chatbot invented.
Documented, foreseeable risks that were ignored anyway. The failure is attention, not information.
Why this quadrant
The underlying mechanism was garden-variety negligent misrepresentation with one plaintiff and a capped, quantifiable loss, a simple linear payoff with a thin, bounded tail, so it stays in Q1 even though the delivery mechanism, an AI chatbot, sounded exotic enough that Air Canada tried to argue for a murkier category of liability.
The record
- C$812.02 total damages and fees ordered by the tribunalcertain
- C$650.88 of that total was the bereavement fare differencecertain
- C$36.14 pre-judgment interest and C$125 tribunal fees making up the restcertain
- Incident date: November 2022 (chatbot interaction and booking)certain
- Ruling date: 14 February 2024, BC Civil Resolution Tribunal, Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149certain
- Chatbot claimed a 90-day retroactive window to file for the bereavement discountcertain
- Air Canada initially offered a $200 CAD voucher before Moffatt filed the claimlikely
- Total round-trip ticket cost 'over $1,400 CAD' per CBS reportinguncertain
- Tribunal member: Christopher C. Riverscertain
- Armilla/Lloyd's AI hallucination insurance product launched 2025, citing Air Canada as a motivating caselikely
Sources
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