Further testing<\/a> revealed pricing errors for basic items. And when I asked about the price of a specific product, Olive didn\u2019t provide a clear answer. Instead, it checked whether the item was in stock and explained pickup fees.<\/p>\n So what exactly is going on here? And what lessons might these incidents hold for businesses and consumers alike? <\/p>\n What actually happened?<\/p>\n Olive is powered by a large language model (LLM). These models don\u2019t \u201cknow\u201d things the way humans do<\/a>, nor do they have mothers. Using elaborate statistical analyses, they generate language that sounds plausible. <\/p>\n Comments from a Woolworths spokesperson to the Australian Financial Review<\/a> suggest that in Olive\u2019s case, the references to its supposed mother appear to have been pre-written scripts dating back several years. <\/p>\n When users entered something that looked like a birthdate, the system likely triggered a matching \u201cfun fact\u201d from an old decision tree with pre-programmed responses.<\/p>\n Woolworths says<\/a> it has now removed this particular scripting \u201cas a result of customer feedback\u201d. <\/p>\n The pricing errors point to a different problem. <\/p>\n Because LLMs generate responses based on learned patterns rather than real-time data, they do not automatically know today\u2019s prices unless they are explicitly connected to a live database. <\/p>\n If that grounding step is weak, the system can produce outdated prices. <\/p>\n Not a new problem<\/p>\n Woolworths is not the first company to discover, after the fact, that its customer-facing AI had unexpectedly \u201cmisbehaved\u201d.<\/p>\n In 2022, Air Canada\u2019s chatbot incorrectly told a passenger<\/a>, Jake Moffatt, that he could purchase tickets at full price and later apply for a bereavement fare refund. No such policy existed. <\/p>\n When Air Canada refused to honour the chatbot\u2019s advice, Moffatt sued the airline and won. <\/p>\n Air Canada\u2019s defence was striking. It argued the chatbot was a separate legal entity, responsible for its own actions and therefore beyond the airline\u2019s liability. The tribunal rejected this outright. It ruled that a chatbot is part of a company\u2019s website, and that the company owns its outputs.<\/p>\n In January 2024, UK parcel delivery firm DPD faced a different kind of embarrassment<\/a>. A frustrated customer who could not get help to locate a missing parcel asked DPD\u2019s chatbot to write a poem that criticised the company. It did. He then asked it to swear. It did that too. The exchange went viral on social media. DPD disabled the chatbot shortly after.<\/p>\n Both cases point to the same underlying failure: companies launched customer-facing AI without adequate oversight and were caught off-guard by the consequences.<\/p>\n What is Woolworths\u2019 responsibility?<\/p>\n Woolworths operates the largest supermarket chain in Australia. It has promoted Olive as a trusted, convenient interface for its customers, who are reasonable to expect that the information Olive provides is accurate. <\/p>\n Woolworths admits its AI assistant can make mistakes. Admitting that Olive may make mistakes, as Woolworths does<\/a> when a user opens the chatbot, does not sit easily with that expectation. <\/p>\n There is also a broader ethical dimension. Woolworths serves customers who, in many cases, are making careful decisions about household budgets. <\/p>\n The ACCC has already commenced proceedings against Woolworths<\/a> over allegedly misleading discount pricing practices. <\/p>\n That context makes the Olive pricing errors harder to dismiss as an isolated technical glitch. <\/p>\n Companies that deploy AI in customer-facing roles take on a duty of care to ensure those systems are accurate and honestly presented. That duty does not diminish because the technology is new.<\/p>\n Why do companies keep making chatbots that pretend to be your friend?<\/p>\n The logic behind Olive\u2019s programmed personality is not without basis.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/file-20260227-77-fhm5sk.png\")
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\n Woolworths<\/a><\/p>\n