Woolworths AI bot baffles customers with human-like “memories” of its mother

Australia's largest supermarket chain, Woolworths, was forced to step in when its AI customer assistant, Olive, started rambling about its mother and claiming to be human.

A supermarket AI-powered assistant can be very handy – and so is Olive, which can help customers find groceries and offer basket suggestions.

But in recent weeks, online users started reporting odd behavior from the AI agent. One Reddit user described how they needed to reschedule a delivery and ended up speaking with Olive.

“It asked me for my date of birth and when I gave it, it started rambling about how its mother was born in the same year and something about it creating photos or something,” the Redditor said, adding that they were already frustrated about having to reschedule their delivery due to a driver mistake, and now they had to deal with “some robot babbling to me on the phone”.

Another Redditor complained about having to engage in “fake banter”, saying:

“Even when connecting me to a human it made fake typing sounds when looking something up, asks for my birthdate and 'bonds' by saying her synthesisor relative was born in the same year. The ick cringe factor whilst wasting completely unnecessary time was enough to make me hate olive and wish her harm.”

A user on X said that Olive "started talking about its memories of its mother and her angry voice" while claiming to be a real person.

Although Woolworths noted that most of the feedback on Olive's "personality" had been "very positive", it has since altered some scripting.

"Olive has been around since 2018. Over this time, customer feedback for Olive has been very positive, with many noting its personality," the company said in a statement to the BBC.

"A number of responses about birthdays were written for Olive by a team member several years ago as a more personal way for Olive to connect with customers.

"As a result of customer feedback, we recently removed this particular scripting."

Many supermarket chains and major retailers are implementing AI-powered customer service assistants to support the customer journey. For example, Walmart introduced its AI shopping assistant, Sparky, in its app, while Target and OpenAI launched a custom Target app in ChatGPT. Amazon tried to make online shopping easier with the introduction of Rufus, while eBay released its shopping agent to improve personalization.

Gartner said that AI will resolve 80% of common customer service issues by 2029. However, researchers warn about AI “hallucinations” – instances when large language models start producing false, misleading, or simply nonsensical information. This can be particularly important in more sensitive fields like healthcare and finance.