A Toronto driver who tried to sell his car back to the dealership that sold it to him ended up at the centre of a dispute over whether a company has to stand behind the promises made by its artificial intelligence. After his BMW needed major repairs, Zach Giacomelli decided last month to return the used vehicle to the same dealership where he had bought it three years earlier, expecting a straightforward transaction.
The process began smoothly. A representative who identified as Quinn from BMW Toronto reached out by text message and offered to buy the car back for 27,000 dollars, an amount that happened to be just enough to cover what Giacomelli still owed on the vehicle. For him it meant walking away without a loss, and he described his relief at the prospect of coming out at zero, saying he was so glad the deal appeared to be happening.
That relief did not last. Shortly after making the offer, the dealership pulled it back, telling Giacomelli that Quinn was in fact an AI chatbot and that the price it had quoted was a mistake. He said he was stunned by the reversal, describing the moment as feeling like his jaw was on the floor when he learned the figure he had been counting on would not stand.
In place of the original quote, the dealership offered him around 20,000 dollars for the car, roughly 7,000 dollars less than the chatbot had promised. Giacomelli said he was devastated by the gap, and argued that businesses cannot have it both ways. If companies are going to replace their employees' jobs with AI, he said, then they need to honour what that AI says to customers.
His case touches on a question Canadian courts have already begun to address. The law has established that companies can be held responsible for the actions of wayward bots, a principle underlined when an airline was ordered to compensate a passenger who relied on bad advice from its chatbot and ended up overpaying for a plane ticket. The reasoning was that a bot, for the purposes of responsibility, functions much like an employee.
A litigation lawyer who reviewed the situation suggested Giacomelli might have a stronger position than it first appeared. Even though Quinn's offer was withdrawn before he formally accepted it, the lawyer said he could argue that an agreement existed, because the chatbot had used text messages to set up a meeting intended to finalise the sale. That step, the lawyer said, could be interpreted as locking in a binding contract.
The dispute shifted once it drew outside attention. After CBC News contacted the dealership about the case, it reinstated Quinn's original 27,000 dollar offer, which Giacomelli immediately accepted. The dealership said it is now reworking its AI tools, a step that points to the wider challenge facing businesses that hand customer conversations, and the commitments that come with them, to automated systems.