Categories
Design & UX Personal Software Engineering

AI personification

I’m trying to navigate Woolworth’s customer support hotline and they’ve personified their AI as a character named “Olive”. While collecting identity verification information:

Olive: What’s your date of birth?
Me: 16 Oct 1987
Olive: That’s the year my mum was born! She was one of the first websites with pictures
Me: WTF
Olive: What’s your postcode?

My thought process, in slow motion:

  • why are you telling me random things?? This is annoying
  • wait, websites didn’t exist in 1987!
  • wait, you don’t have a mum, you’re an AI character
  • this is ridiculous. Who designed it to say this?!
  • oh we’ve moved on

My friend Jack asked if I could get anymore backstory out of it, and next time I’m tempted to try get the LLM off course.