10 Stories About Customers Who Refused To Believe They Weren’t Talking To A Chat-Bot

Roundups | Right | April 17, 2023

Dear readers,

The age of A.I is upon us! ChatGPT is handling itself pretty well against a barrage of questions so dumb they sound like customers from Not Always Right stories, and the tech giants are competing to see who can be the first to build SkyNet. Yet despite being on the precipice of the ‘information explosion’ there are those who still mistrust machines, especially those that can talk to you.

We’ve rounded up ten stories from the Not Always Right archives about customers calling into a call center and actually getting a human, but convinced it was some advanced A.I that could pass the Turing Test. Enjoy!

Please Do Not Press The Beeping Button – When you want to say “I’m not a beeping machine!”

A.I.: Alarming Idiocy – When we associate robots with red rings of death.

Personal Caller – It doesn’t take much to question reality these days.

Where’s A Real Live Robot When You Need One – For some introverts this is a real issue.

For Ditzy Customers, Please Press 2 – To be fair the customers are impolite to humans and machines alike.

Machines 1, Humanity -16 – If the Turing Test is for a machine to convince a human that they’re talking to another human, what’s the name of the test for a human convincing another human that they’re not a machine?

Thank You For Calling Planet Of The Apes – Ne thankful that there are peoples.

This Call Has Been Terminated – This story is from 2010. We’d love to know how this customer is navigating the modern world of A.I now!

Welcome To HAL Industries – I was a ‘peoples’ the last time I checked!

Darwin Called, He Wants His Prehensile Thumb Back – And a final story about a caller who knew they were talking to a human, but has spent waaaay too long letting automated machinery do the work for them…

We hope you enjoyed this Man-Vs-Machine-themed roundup! Want to send in your own story? Submit your story here!

Some other roundups to check out if you liked this one:

14 Funny Stories About Technologically-Challenged Customers