In reality, Air Canada's policy explicitly stated that the airline will not provide refunds for bereavement travel after the flight is booked.

Experts told the Vancouver Sun that Moffatt's case appeared to be the first time a Canadian company tried to argue that it wasn't liable for information provided by its chatbot.

Last March, Air Canada's chief information officer Mel Crocker told the Globe and Mail that the airline had launched the chatbot as an AI "experiment."

“So in the case of a snowstorm, if you have not been issued your new boarding pass yet and you just want to confirm if you have a seat available on another flight, that’s the sort of thing we can easily handle with AI,” Crocker told the Globe and Mail.

It was worth it, Crocker said, because "the airline believes investing in automation and machine learning technology will lower its expenses" and "fundamentally" create "a better customer experience."

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