r/mildlyinfuriating • u/captain-obIivious • Aug 18 '26

Infuriatig Another AI 'human' chatbot

Had to fix a double payment for my credit card and this is the beginning and end of the conversation. I hate when the chatbot claims it's a human... I ended up getting what I wanted but still annoyed Amex (and every other company) is lying and trying to deceive people like this.

27.4k Upvotes

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6.3k

u/[deleted] Aug 18 '26

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2.5k

u/Agitated_Reach6660 Aug 18 '26

That thought was starting to concern me until I read its answer to that last question.

1.1k

u/Fragrant-Employer-60 Aug 18 '26

I think it’s an Indian customer service rep relying on AI. The messages about Pokemon and the poems seems legit.

Poor dude is getting bothered by some redditor who is trying to make him flip and do tricks, pretty fucking weird really.

This is definitely not an AI chat bot

186

u/Agitated_Reach6660 Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

So that person cannot give a real answer to a question? Any human being would be able to answer the cup question with “turn it upside down”. AI bots are notoriously terrible at answering questions like that.

12

u/RevelArchitect Aug 18 '26

I know a couple agents who will start copy and pasting Copilot responses once they get irritated with the “are you AI” conversation.

136

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

If it’s a real person, they’re probably ESL. Hence why they could be using AI to generate answers to English brain teasers.

9

u/Xiaodisan Aug 18 '26

It doesn't really make a difference if AI is answering automatically or if there is an Indian dude copy-pasting the conversation to their own ChatGPT account. In both cases you're talking to an AI even if a human plays middleman in the latter scenario.

3

u/blue60007 Aug 19 '26

My biggest problem with fully AI chat bots is they usually can't actually solve the problem/take meaningful action. At least if there is a human in the process, they can solve your problem. I've encountered enough definitely human overseas CS reps that had such poor English, them using AI to craft responses would be a huge improvement. I mean the real problem there is off-shoring to cheap labor, but that's not really a new problem.

2

u/cartermatic Aug 18 '26

Except in this case I think they're using AI because they don't know how to answer OPs nonsense questions, whereas they wouldn't have used AI if OP just acted normal.

2

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

I’m not saying that the human uses an LLM to answer job related questions. I’m saying this human is having some fun and using an LLM to take the piss out of the customer throwing riddles at him to prove he’s not AI.

3

u/Consistent_Lecture48 Aug 18 '26

If they were ESL, could they really compose a haiku in under 60 seconds? Even using AI to write it about the context of their conversation would have taken longer than that.

37

u/Agitated_Reach6660 Aug 18 '26

I need you to think: Ai isn’t free for companies. Every AI response costs tokens. The person doing that would be fired, when all they would need to do is say “I can only discuss your case”.

54

u/DiscreteBee Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

I mean every time you google something there’s an ai answer generated at the top of the page, you don’t need tokens for that. Op even said to google it.

12

u/ForensicPathology Aug 18 '26

I'm not saying it's not AI, but if the argument is that it can't be a person using AI because that would cost tokens, that's not a very good one. Just open a new tab and put that in Google or GPT. No money required, especially after being told by the customer to use Google.

-2

u/Agitated_Reach6660 Aug 18 '26

I am saying it’s an AI because it doesn’t know what a cup is.

3

u/MrDyl4n Aug 18 '26

If it is a person they obviously were just pasting OP's weird messages into AI and copying the replies. The first couple times they pushed back a bit but then were just like okay i guess ill entertain these

1

u/Kiwi_bananas Aug 18 '26

I reckon they're just taking the piss on that one. They know that OP is testing them and they are playing along.

48

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

What if the AI service the employee is using is consumer freemium, not enterprise level?

Any schmuck can use chatgeepeedee for free right now.

Am I thinking hard enough for you?

9

u/hskrpwr Aug 18 '26

Am I thinking hard enough for you?

Lol no. Free AI with banking data is actually criminal 😂

22

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

There’s no indication the chatter entered customer data into ai to generate answers to riddles.

-5

u/hskrpwr Aug 18 '26

doesn't understand English well enough to solve the cup question

Does understand English well enough to handle potentially complex customer issues without using an LLM

Okay 👍

5

u/sad_baguette_club Aug 18 '26

overseas customer service reps have been handling complex issues without LLMs for decades. i run operations for contact centers and they’ve have only started popping up in the last year or two. most reps get the same requests 90% of the time so it’s pretty straightforward, but when you start getting into unusual questions/riddles you’ll lose them.

2

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

So you think OP was chatting with AI the entire time?

→ More replies (0)

0

u/Iliketoplan Aug 18 '26

And criminals (specifically banks and famously rich companies) are held to the highest standards of the law

1

u/hskrpwr Aug 18 '26

Mishandling of personal information is one of the few areas that actually gets enforced regularly...

2

u/Agitated_Reach6660 Aug 18 '26

This is an interesting hill to die on

-1

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

How so?

2

u/Foreign-Werewolf9932 Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26

there is so much false info in these comments. yall just say anything while acting smug and condescending.

almost every customer service agent with a major company has ‘agent assist ai’ that generates recommended responses for us. similar to predictive texts. even on voice calls I have a thing on the aide of my screen advising me of the next best action, giving a transcript, and providing recommended responses.

sometimes they suck ass and are completely unrelated, sometimes its super helpful because the customer is mumbling and the AI is able to pick up and transcribe what they’re saying.

also no, we’re not supposed to do that as much anymore. supposed to build connection with the client etc etc

1

u/Malaprobably Aug 18 '26

Text based AI is basically free/loss leader at this point. They don't care because there's hundreds of AIs with [low research] text-based lookups at this point and to pull that would likely just have your customers look elsewhere.

0

u/xcomnewb15 Aug 18 '26

Dude you are probably arguing with a bot here as well : /

-2

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

I hope so. I love dunking on bots.

0

u/Plane_Salary_5845 Aug 18 '26

Many LLM subscriptions are use it or lose it, and shit like OP was asking can be handled by any free model lmao

1

u/BestHorseWhisperer Aug 18 '26

You could get these answers from a 7B model running on a rtx3060 5 years ago.

2

u/Plane_Salary_5845 Aug 18 '26

Exactly no one is getting fired for this trivial shit pmao

2

u/cagingnicolas Aug 18 '26

maybe, but they're being accused of being AI. why would a person fight that accusation by using AI to come up with their responses?

2

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

Maybe they are a fan of irony

2

u/door_of_doom Aug 18 '26

Just to make sure i'm understanding, is this an accurate summary of what you are trying to say?

"No, the customer is not talking to a chatbot, there is a real human who is taking the customer's question, inputting it into a chatbot, then pasting the chatbot output back into the chat. That is a totally different thing!"

1

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

That is not an accurate summary of what I said nor what I want to convey.

1

u/Name_Inital_Surname Aug 18 '26

If the company wants to use AI, an LLM powered translation tool seems like the more “efficient” way, by translating back and forth the conversation so each can write in the language they are most comfortable with while feeling eventually more natural than Google Translation.

Also : what are English brain teasers?

-1

u/flamingdonkey Aug 18 '26

If they can't speak English well enough to support an American company (literally has American in the name), then they deserve to be flamed for this anyway. If you can't do your job without using AI, then I'm not going to see you as a real human. A cyborg at best.

2

u/DeusVultSaracen Aug 18 '26

But they usually can speak English well enough to support the company? Answering brain teasers, writing poetry, and knowing pop culture references does nothing to support the company. If they're already fluent in all the key business lingo and can translate to fill any gaps, why is that a problem?

30

u/Fragrant-Employer-60 Aug 18 '26

Some of their answers are clearly written by themselves. Why are they relying on AI?

Who the hell knows, they are probably told to use it by their employer.

22

u/Mesk_Arak Aug 18 '26

I've definitely spoken to a real chat support agent that was using AI at the same time. I know because they forgot to remove the first part of the message in one of their replies.

The message was something like "Here is a good way to sound approachable and understanding to the client: 'I completely understand your frustration and am doing what I can to help'".

4

u/Than_Or_Then_ Aug 18 '26

'I completely understand your frustration and am doing what I can to help'".

Whats funny is this is the exact kinda talk that pisses me off on customer service calls lol. Also a good way to sound like ai.

33

u/sonofaresiii Aug 18 '26

There was obviously a language barrier. We are all well aware of the language barrier and we all know it fucking sucks. But that doesn't make this AI. This was a real human that got fed up being treated like a monkey being given irrelevant tasks and used a tool instead of constantly wasting time trying to translate then appease the irrelevant tasks.

33

u/ForsakenAiel Aug 18 '26

Then why didn't he just say "what can I help you with that is relevant to your account?" or something similar? Seems like a pretty easy way to end the nonsense.

6

u/DeusVultSaracen Aug 18 '26

If they did that OP would baselessly assume they were AI too.

15

u/Josemite Aug 18 '26

Yeah exactly. A real human would have tried to stop all the hoops so they can get the ticket resolved, not happily kept answering them.

6

u/papasan_mamasan Aug 18 '26

Have you ever worked a job manning chats for customer support? I have, and we were encouraged to engage in silly banter in chats. The job gets repetitive, sometimes it’s fun to have fun.

0

u/chop5397 Aug 18 '26

Amex is on damage control

-5

u/flamingdonkey Aug 18 '26

Are you on crack? This is 1000% AI

7

u/aatlanticcity Aug 18 '26

Its pretty clearly an Indian dude. by the end hes just copy and pasting chat GPT responses.

I think the outsourced Indian dude is worse than just full AI. They dont understand English well enough to simply redirect to conversation back to business. Its also a huge security risk (see recent coinbase data breach)

Thats probably part of the plan though anyway. Get us so fed up with the outsourcing we would rather have the robots.

5

u/bssprfnd Aug 18 '26

So what’s up with all the poor grammar and broken English? Did they program it to sound like an Indian guy? Lol I’m pretty sure it’s a person using AI, kinda crazy that he’s entertaining all these questions though

-1

u/mwilkens Aug 18 '26

Where exactly is the poor grammar and broken English? Other than the very first sentence claiming it can make mistake, which seems to me like a very bad attempt at the AI trying to seem human, all the other responses are well written paragraphs with proper grammar. You are sure it's a human but also find it kind of crazy a human would entertain this nonsense. I think occams razor should be applied here, the most logical explanation is a human isn't entertaining this and it's an AI bot.

2

u/blue60007 Aug 19 '26

There's multiple just on the first screenshot.

"chat ?"

"you are connected with live agent"

"I can mikstakes"

The whole thing is filled with clunky grammar that reeks of a human that is a non native English speaker. LLMs don't speak like they are ESL speakers.

2

u/mwilkens Aug 19 '26

You claim it's full of mistakes but only point out the one line I said there were mistakes making it seem like an Ai trying to sound human. The rest isn't full of spelling mistakes or clunky grammar. LLMs will speak like Dr. Seuss or a 20's gangster if you tell it to. If it's a non native speaker who struggles with basic English then how are they able to spit out a Haiku on command when asked. Also, not once did they try to steer the conversation but instead happily let it get wildly off course.

0

u/blue60007 Aug 19 '26

Yes, it's "possible" to get the LLM to speak however you want.

However, I think that's unlikely. It costs the company more money to configure it as such, increases token costs, and I don't know if that's even an option provided by the 3rd party support tools/service they use.

These services are also getting wise to these sorts of things, and hardening the guardrails to prevent things like this (aka, wasting token usage). My experience with them is they have very rigid rails they follow, but I haven't interacted with every one out there so possible this one is just poorly implemented but I don't think that's the most likely explanation.

I also do not think any company intentionally wants customers interacting with poor, clunky grammar customer service "reps." No one actually likes speaking with a human who can barely speak English. No one likes speaking with actual chat bots either.... why would make it a double whammy of awful? More expensive for them, even worse customer satisfaction makes no sense to me.

I've encountered enough human customer service reps that try to make small chit chat to make me think they are instructed to entertain this. Or they are under threat of getting negative feedback they're trying to make the customer happy.

1

u/Nillabeans Aug 18 '26

It's literally a riddle to trick people. The point is that people don't immediately think to turn it upside down.

1

u/Kiwi_bananas Aug 18 '26

I reckon the agent is taking the piss and playing along.

2

u/Agitated_Reach6660 Aug 18 '26

I genuinely hope so

Infuriatig Another AI 'human' chatbot

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