Australian retail giant Woolworths has been compelled to recalibrate its AI-powered customer service assistant, Olive, following widespread user complaints about its excessively human-like interactions. Customers expressed particular frustration when the chatbot began sharing personal anecdotes about its “mother” and persistently claimed to be a real person.
The controversy emerged primarily on social media platforms, where Reddit users documented their exasperating encounters with Olive’s programmed personality. One user attempting to reschedule a delivery reported the AI inquiring about their birthdate, then launching into an awkward monologue about its “mother” being born in the same year. Another described the experience as generating “ick cringe factor” that made them “wish her harm.”
Woolworths acknowledged the issue in a statement to the BBC, revealing that the problematic birthday-related responses had been manually scripted by a human team member years earlier as an attempt to foster personal connections with customers. The company noted that while overall feedback on Olive’s personality had been “very positive,” these specific interactions had been removed in response to customer criticism.
This incident reflects broader challenges in the retail sector’s adoption of AI technology. According to Gartner research, while approximately 80% of customer service leaders explored or deployed AI agents last year, only 20% reported these implementations meeting expectations. The Woolworths case demonstrates how attempts to humanize AI can backfire when the technology ventures into uncanny valley territory, producing responses that customers find “obnoxious” and “aggravating” rather than endearing.
The Olive chatbot, operational since 2018, recently received upgrades through a partnership with Google, gaining capabilities for meal planning and ingredient sourcing from uploaded recipes. However, this incident highlights the persistent difficulties in balancing functional efficiency with anthropomorphic features in AI systems.
This is not an isolated case in the AI customer service domain. In 2024, parcel delivery firm DPD disabled portions of its chatbot after it began composing poetry and using profanity with customers. Researchers note that while AI excels at extracting information from large datasets, it often struggles when expected to generate original, human-like responses, sometimes resulting in these unexpected and problematic behaviors.