Blame the chatbot? Brent Arnold comments on a developing source of business liability in Canadian Press

Earlier this week, the B.C. Civil Resolution Tribunal ordered Air Canada to pay $800 to an aggrieved passenger who was given bad advice from the airline's website chatbot. Based on this faulty advice, the passenger spent twice as much on his bereavement ticket fare than he had to.

Brent Arnold, a commercial litigator in Gowling WLG's Toronto office, commented in the Canadian Press about Air Canada's defense strategy. The airline had argued that the chatbox was effectively responsible for its own actions, a novel defence that – however counter-intuitive – nods to the way artificial intelligence tools could complicate bedrock principles of liability in the years to come.

"If a company wants to avoid liability as they offer a chatbot, they would have to use a lot of language making it highly visible that they take no responsibility for the information it provides, which would make it of questionable use to consumers"

Click the link below to read the full article, which was syndicated in CTV, the Toronto Star, Global News and CityNews among numerous other outlets across the country:

• Air Canada chatbot decision a reminder of company liability: experts

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