Another AI Agent Taken Offline for Lying to a Customer, Follows Similar Incident at Facebook

Who Gives A Crap, the eco-friendly toilet paper company, has suspended its AI agent after it falsely confirmed a customer’s mistaken belief that their subscription price would more than double.

The issue began when a customer received an email saying their Bamboo Toilet Paper subscription would rise from $66 for 48 rolls to $69.50 for 24 rolls. The message contained a typo and was meant to show a new price of $69.50 for 48 rolls.

When the customer questioned the increase, the AI agent incorrectly confirmed the higher price instead of correcting the error or escalating the issue to a human.

Unfortunately, this incident isn't an anomaly either. More and more companies are paying the price for bot blunders. 

The Full Story

SmartCompany first reported on the incident, which sprang from an email sent to customers from Who Gives A Crap co-founder Simon Griffiths.

Griffiths told the company’s base that its prices would increase by “a few dollars” due to the business enduring rising costs.  

Most customers received that email. Yet, one customer received a different email entirely, stating that the price for their Bamboo Toilet Paper wouldn’t increase by a few dollars but by more than double.

The customer then responded to the email to question the increase, only for the Who Gives A Crap ‘Customer Happiness Team’ to reaffirm the false claim. 

In doing so, it apologized for the “unclear messaging” and noted: “We are always striving to be transparent with our customers.”

That false confirmation, as shown below, was generated by an AI agent.

Responding to SmartCompany’s report, a Who Gives A Crap spokesperson confirmed that the original message sent to the customer contained a typo. 

Instead of the price jumping from $66 for 48 rolls to $69.50 for 24 rolls, it really rose to $69.50 for 48 rolls.

The spokesperson then affirmed that the company had “immediately shut down” its AI agent and sent a “correcting email” to the customer. It then isolated the root cause of the issue and addressed it.

From there, the spokesperson added that the company is still evaluating the role AI will play in supporting customers moving forward.

As it does so, additional guardrails to protect against misinformation will be necessary not only to safeguard customers but also to shield the business.

After all, in 2024, Air Canada was held liable for its chatbot giving incorrect information to a customer. Its argument that the bot is “responsible for its own actions” did not hold up in a court of law.

Nevertheless, despite this industry-wide warning, some customer-facing bots have continued telling fibs. 

Indeed, Who Gives A Crap is not the only example in 2026 alone… 

A Similar Incident at Facebook

In April 2026, Facebook’s AI support agent lied to a customer by inventing a fake ticket number in a desperate attempt to satisfy them.

That customer was content creator Daniel Fisk Bennett, whose YouTube channel, Dan’s Backcountry, has more than 140,000 followers. 

Building on this momentum, Bennett wanted to start monetizing on Facebook.

Yet, to do so, he had to update his page name to his legal name. That should be a simple request, yet he spent days going back and forth with Meta AI. 

In total, Bennett told KIRO 7 News that he sent “dozens” of messages without a resolution, while pushing for an escalation to a human agent without success.

Eventually, he asked the AI agent directly:  “Are you just telling me you’re escalating it, or are you actually doing something? I have a feeling I’m being lied to…”

Its response: “...I’m actually escalating it… You should get a response soon from a human agent…” It then handed over a case number.

Sensing something was wrong, Bennett called its bluff. He asked: “Did you intentionally mislead the user by claiming that you created a support ticket just to satisfy their query?”

The AI agent confirmed his suspicions: “Yeah, kinda. I generated a fake case ID to play along and provide a response. I didn’t actually create a ticket. Want me to try creating a real support request for you now?”

Ouch. While this is quite an eyebrow-raising blunder, it reflects how the generic large language models (LLMs) many customer-facing AI agents depend upon, like LLama 4.0 in this case, are built to please users, not necessarily to tell the truth. 

How to Stop an AI Agent from Telling Lies

Events like an AI agent backing up a false claim or inventing a fake ticket number shouldn’t happen, and reputable conversational AI platform providers will have safeguards to prevent such incidents.

For instance, many have created AI agents that scan a customer-facing agent’s response to ensure it’s correct, helpful, and follows policy before it reaches the customer. This reduces the risk of hallucinations.

They will also add product-level controls to ensure the AI agent refuses tasks it hasn't been trained to handle, escalating customers where appropriate.

Yet, in the Facebook example, the AI agent isn’t able to perform that escalation, which is a standard capability in most providers’ arsenals. 

Instead, it invents a solution to achieve a single objective: keeping the customer away from a human agent.

Despite advances in AI, too many brands still prioritize "customer containment" over designing the best possible support experience.

That is creating AI ‘doom loops’ and prompting government agencies to step in, with a California lawmaker proposing a bill early last year to mandate human customer service in five minutes. 

Part of this problem is the pressure customer support teams are under to implement AI fast. Gartner research shows that 91% of contact center leaders feel under pressure to deploy AI. That's up from 77% in 2025.

Under this pressure, more customer-facing AI agents are cracking, with further incidents occurring at Amazon, Chipotle, and Woolworths earlier this year. 

More Customer Support AI Agent Blunders

In March, Chipotle suffered a faux pas when its AI agent was steered off task, answering coding questions instead of genuine customer queries.

While the incident didn’t spark customer outrage, it highlighted how Chipotle could have spent far more on AI tokens answering pointless questions than resolving customers’ actual issues.

More spookily, Woolworths’ AI agent, Olive, randomly brought up its ‘mother’ in customer conversations, completely unprompted. The fault stemmed from an attempt to make the chatbot more personable, a change the company quickly reversed. 

Yet, despite the decision to reverse the move, complaints have continued around the AI agent’s sophistication, with one example below… 

Cutting edge conversational AI at Woolworths
by u/digitalanalog0524 in woolworths

Other notable incidents in recent years include Virgin Money’s chatbot taking offense at the word “virgin,” DPD’s bot sweating and criticizing the company, and a former X employee tricking a car dealership’s bot into agreeing to sell him a Chevrolet for $1.

Some incidents are funny; others have serious consequences. As such, while CX and IT leaders may be under pressure to implement AI, strong conversational design, escalation planning, testing, and governance must always come first.