this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2026
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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They are a business owner asking online if they can ignore an order after using a chatbot to communicate with and interface with customers. They failed in their duties to themselves and their customers by not vetting the tools they allowed on their website.
This is on them. I'm not celebrating that they are in a bad position. But I'm not surprised that this happened and I don't feel empathy for someone who should have known better. If it can happen to giant airlines and big tech firms, it can happen to you, and since the small business owner doesn't have the market cap to offset such a "mistake", they get what they paid for.
Nobody forced them to become an entrepreneur. Nobody forced them to use a chatbot on their website. Nobody forced them to not explore the functionality of their chatbot, or not put guardrails on it.
There are plenty of websites and storefronts that have order forms that just work. There wasn't a need to use the chatbot to take orders.
This is a costly lesson for this shop owner, but it's a lesson they could have learned from watching others. Instead they chose to get a first hand experience of the pitfalls of using AI as a customer support medium.
There is the equally valid viewpoint that this person fell for bad marketing, something that has at some point happened to everyone. This person could be your ally instead people just stand in a circle point the finger and laugh. That is not the kind of world I want to live in.
There's an equally valid chance they are not and will not be my "ally" at any point.
I say that because having been burned by the AI they used and regardless to whether or not they see posts like this one online, they seem more worried about the fact that this order may be valid than they do about the fact that this chatbot gave a completely hallucinated discount code at all.
A lawyer, not reddit, should be determining whether or not this person is liable for honoring the discount. I suspect they are not even on the hook for what the chatbot promised, legally speaking. And all of that assumes this is even a real thing that happened and not some random bot account on reddit making it up for clout or karma farming.
The vast majority of people aren't even pointing and laughing. They are asking "what did you expect?". That's a valid question.
Falling for marketing doesn't absolve anyone of their responsibility to do their own due diligence. A cursory search of the internet would provide thousands of hits explaining the pros and cons of such a chatbot.
If this doesn't change this (potentially fabricated) persons mind about AI I'm not sure what will.