This machine checked out mentally.
A Circle K customer was raging against the AI-powered self-checkout machine after it accidentally “hallucinated” that they wanted to donate billions of dollars to charity.
“I just wanted a hot dog,” the incensed shopper declared in a viral Reddit post that has since been deleted but resurfaced elsewhere.
The Post reached out to Circle K for comment.
They were discussing his experience at the Canadian convenience store chain, which recently rolled out these next-gen automated checkout kiosks as a way to expedite the process.
They reportedly employ artificial intelligence to ID and ring up multiple items automatically without the use of barcodes, thereby allowing customers to check out eight times faster than the regular version, Forbes reported.
However, said Redditor found these mart machines anything but efficient.
An accompanying screenshot showed the onscreen itemized list in question, which showed several flavors of Gatorades for several bucks apiece and $8.5 billion to be donated to the American Red Cross.
At the bottom of the virtual bill, there was an option to pay with card or cash.
Reddit users had a field day with the alleged glitch in the machine, with one wit quipping, “Would you like to round up to the nearest billion for charity?”
“My daily transaction limit is $2B,” wrote another, while one joked that the original poster was a “broke ass.”
“A billion here, a billion there, sooner or later it starts adding up to real money,” snarked another.
While the Redditor felt that the retail robot was a hallucination — when an AI generates false or fabricated info while sounding authoritative — some commenters had a simpler explanation.
“Looks more like someone put their phone number into the donation screen rather than the membership screen,” theorized one.
Another observed that the number length certainly checked out, saying, “this looks like it could be an area code and number.”
Either way, this wouldn’t be the first time artificial intelligence has acted anything but.
In a far more dystopian trend, a bombshell investigation found that Google’s AI-generated search results are generation millions of incorrect answers per hour – with users left none the wiser.
This has proved particularly hard on news outlets, who have already lost eyeballs and ad revenue to AI chatbots.
“Google AI Overviews have been a disaster for publishers who rely on clicks to fund the production of quality journalism, but they also let down users looking for accurate information,” said Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group that represents more than 2,000 news outlets including The Post.
