Hallucinated Service: AI Chatbots and the Customer Service Reckoning

From early rule-based chatbots and Microsoft Tay to the generative AI boom, companies have rushed AI agents into customer service to cut costs and scale interactions. The timeline traces a decade of automation, high-profile hallucinations—Air Canada's bereavement-fare chatbot, McDonald's drive-thru order errors, telecom and airline mishaps—and the growing backlash from workers, customers, and regulators over accountability, consumer rights, and what 'service' means when the agent is a model that makes things up. This timeline was generated automatically by TimeStrands AI from Wikipedia research. Facts are sourced; framing may be imperfect.