Slop is definitely the perfect word to describe the current state of AI, especially when it comes to customer service. At this point, plenty of people have had a nightmarish experience dealing with the most unintelligent artificial intelligence in a chatroom or over the phone. And one man in Mississippi simply had enough, as the AI agent for his apartment complex pushed him to his limits, and he crashed out on the non-human helper. “I got frustrated with it, cussed it out, and hung up,” he said, and for that, his landlord fined him $100.
Initially, the AI was supposed to be a substitute of sorts when no one was in the management office for the complex. “But unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out that way. Now, even during office hours, no one answers the phone, and no one is in the office,” the renter explained on r/legaladvice. He was in a pickle and needed to speak to staff, but after 10 minutes of dealing with the “unhelpful” and “stupid” AI, he told it what’s what. However, come the next day, he received a letter saying that he “violated the lease by using ‘abusive language’ towards the AI.” Now, he owes management $100.
“Do I really have to pay it, or is this a shakedown?” he asked Reddit, wondering whether the landlord even has the legal authority to impose such a bizarre penalty fee. Luckily, thousands of the post’s readers collectively agree that if it’s not in the lease, it’s not enforceable. Unless there’s something that specifically says no one is allowed to badmouth the apartment’s AI, then there’s no way the landlord can enforce the payment. “I bet they can’t or it is so vague as to be not clear to anyone,” commented a Redditor.
Some Online Users Believe Swearing Makes AI Connect You to Staff Faster
As to why the landlord dislikes his tenants swearing at his AI agent, details weren’t shared. However, a handful of Redditors believe that cussing out an AI chatbot could actually get one to a real staff member sooner rather than later. As one r/LifeProTips poster explains, “The reason for this is that many of the CS bots have affordance for detecting angry customers and will skip through their loop to add you to a ‘talk to a human’ queue if they detect you are mad.” On the flip side, as a top commenter mentions, there’s also a strong possibility the chatbot will kick out anyone who uses swear words, so it might not always work.
