A “polite but firm” email written by the AI chatbot ChatGPT to an airline carrier on behalf of a woman whose flight was delayed by more than six hours has taken social media users by surprise.
A woman named Cherie Luo shared a short reel on her Instagram account in December last year of the incident but the video has been gaining traction and at the moment has 2.6 million views.
After waiting for her flight’s status for six hours, Ms Luo, who has 37.5k followers on the social media platform and 100k+ on TikTok, asked ChatGPT to write a “polite but passively aggressive and firm email to the airline”.
In the video, which she captioned with the warning, “This is the future. What jobs will be replaced by ChatGPT?” she said: “Our flight was delayed six hours. I asked ChatGPT to write an email to the airline.”
Ms Lou’s request read: “Write a polite but passively aggressive and firm email to an airline. My flight was delayed by 6 hours with no updates while we were at the airport. The priority pass lounge did not admit us even after we waited for over three hours on their waitlist.”
ChatGPT started the email with: “I am writing to express my extreme frustration and disappointment with the experience I had on my recent flight with your airline.”
It was unclear to which airline the email was sent. The video also didn’t mention the destination or the departure cities.
The bot continued: “Firstly, my flight was significantly delayed by six hours with no updates or communication from your staff while we were at the airport. This caused a great deal of inconvenience and stress for myself and my fellow travellers as we were left in the dark about what was going on and when we would be able to leave.”
The bot mentioned that even though Ms Lou was a “priority pass member”, she was unable to access the lounge despite being on the waitlist for more than three hours.
“I understand delays can happen due to unforeseen circumstances but the lack of communication and failure to provide access to the lounges promised is completely unacceptable.”
The responses to the bot’s email ranged from mirth to wariness for conveying the human undertones of annoyance and passive aggressiveness. “THIS is the perfect use of Chatgpt lmao. The professional emails you wish you don’t have to write,” wrote one social media user.
One wrote in the comments: “Artificial Intelligence will destroy the natural intelligence of human beings. It can’t be our future.”
Another said: “This is going to impact the thinking and communication skills of humans… People are gonna use less and less [of their] brain.”
Yet another social media user wrote: “The downfall of mankind and brain use is official now… thanks ChatGPT.”
Another predicted: “The human ability to think, articulate and communicate will be lost in the next decade… machines will determine our responses and actions. The repercussions beyond just lost jobs… how can people be amazed at this.”
ChatGPT was launched in November and since then users have described conversations with the artificial intelligence as being “unhinged” as it lies, attacks, and speculates on its own purpose. One can have conversations with the bot which has been called “human-like”, prompt it to write essays, create recipes, make medical diagnoses, mimic famous authors, and code software.
